A database-centric architecture for home-based health monitoring

Abstract

Traditionally, database management systems (DBMSs) have been employed exclusively for data management in infrastructures supporting Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems. However, DBMSs provide other mechanisms, such as for security, dependability, and extensibility that can facilitate the development, use, and maintenance of AAL applications. This work utilizes such mechanisms, particularly extensibility, and proposes a database-centric architecture to support home-based healthcare applications. An active database is used to monitor and respond to events taking place in the home, such as bed-exits. In-database data mining methods are applied to model early night behaviors of people living alone. Encapsulating the processing into the DBMS avoids transferring and processing sensitive data outside of database, enables changes in the logic to be managed on-the-fly, and reduces code duplication. As a result, such an approach leads to better performance and increased security and privacy, and can facilitate the adaptability and scalability of AAL systems. An evaluation of the architecture with datasets collected in real homes demonstrated the feasibility and flexibility of the approach. © Springer International Publishing 2013.