A Low Power Wireless Personal Area Network for Telemedicine

Abstract

the current common goal in medical information technology today is the design and implementation of telemedicine solutions, which provide to patients services that enhance their quality of life. Recent technological advances in sensors, low-power integrated circuits, and wireless communications have enabled the design of low-cost, miniature, and intelligent physiological sensor modules. These modules are capable of measuring, processing, communicating one or more physiological parameters, and can be integrated into a wireless personal area network (WPAN). In this paper we present the realization of a wireless personal area network for patient monitoring, as a part of a telemedicine system, capable to measure and transmit physiological parameters such us blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rhythm, pulse oximetry SpO2, body temperature, and three ECG leads. The use of WPAN is suitable for continuous long-time patient monitoring as a part of a diagnostic procedure, can achieve medical assistance of a chronic condition, or can be supervised during recovery from an acute event or surgical procedure. For instance, the computer-assisted rehabilitation involves unwieldy wires between sensors and monitoring device that are not very comfortable for normal activity. We use the intelligent wireless sensors, based on low power microcontrollers and RF transceivers that perform the measurements and computes the physiological parameters. Individual sensor monitors specific physiological parameter and communicates with the personal server. Personal server, in form of a wireless PDA that running a personal health monitor application, receives the information from wireless sensors, activates the alarms when the measured parameters are above the limits, and communicates periodically to the central server (part of the telemedicine system) by using WiFi or GSM/GPRS connection. The monitor reacts to potential health risks and records physiological information into a local database. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.