Implementation of Smart Medical Home Gateway System for Chronic Patients

Abstract

Because of the rapid aging population in Taiwan and the trend of fewer children, people are looking into technical solutions for continuous/intermittent monitoring of vital signs in the home setting environment and the interactions between family members. In this study, we have designed and implemented a home medical gateway system to connect the home-care side and the health informatics side. The home-care part provides five vital signs monitoring and on-line feedback message. Users are allowed to browse their records and read the received health information (e.g. physical checkup, health education, preventive inoculation...etc.) on the Flash based interface. This study also evaluated the practicability of the home gateway system. The number of interviewees is twenty. The analysis results show the positive user feedback of the system, and have high potential to promote the quality of patient's life. An example case of obstructed sleep apnea (OSA) patient has been studied with this system. The result shows that the gateway system can help the OSA patient to monitor and improve their sleep quality.