Health care applications

TLDR

Recent availability of wireless medical sensor prototypes and growing diffusion of electronic health record databases highlight the need for a unified communication framework. The paper proposes the Internet of Things communication framework as the main enabler for distributed worldwide health care applications. The authors analyze sensor and record database trends, model a future day’s processes, derive communication requirements, and design integration as web services. They present an IoT protocol stack that satisfies the identified requirements and offers advantages for health care scenarios.

Abstract

This paper proposes the Internet of Things communication framework as the main enabler for distributed worldwide health care applications. Starting from the recent availability of wireless medical sensor prototypes and the growing diffusion of electronic health care record databases, we analyze the requirements of a unified communication framework. Our investigation takes the move by decomposing the storyline of a day in Robert's life, our unlucky character in the not so far future, into simple processes and their interactions. Subsequently, we devise the main communication requirements for those processes and for their integration in the Internet as web services. Finally, we present the Internet of Things protocol stack and the advantages it brings to health care scenarios in terms of the identified requirements.