A wireless body area network of intelligent motion sensors for computer assisted physical rehabilitation.
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Date
2005-03-07
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Abstract
BACKGROUND Recent technological advances in integrated circuits wireless communications and physiological sensing allow miniature lightweight ultra low power intelligent monitoring devices A number of these devices can be integrated into a Wireless Body Area Network WBAN a new enabling technology for health monitoring METHODS Using off the shelf wireless sensors we designed a prototype WBAN which features a standard ZigBee compliant radio and a common set of physiological kinetic and environmental sensors RESULTS We introduce a multi tier telemedicine system and describe how we optimized our prototype WBAN implementation for computer assisted physical rehabilitation applications and ambulatory monitoring The system performs real time analysis of sensors data provides guidance and feedback to the user and can generate warnings based on the user s state level of activity and environmental conditions In addition all recorded information can be transferred to medical servers via the Internet and seamlessly integrated into the user s electronic medical record and research databases CONCLUSION WBANs promise inexpensive unobtrusive and unsupervised ambulatory monitoring during normal daily activities for prolonged periods of time To make this technology ubiquitous and affordable a number of challenging issues should be resolved such as system design configuration and customization seamless integration standardization further utilization of common off the shelf components security and privacy and social issues