Wearable Devices in Healthcare: Challenges, Current Trends and a Proposition of Affordable Low Cost and Scalable Computational Environment of Internet of Things

Abstract

Use of wearable devices (e.g. smart bands) for monitoring of the patients outside hospitals, clinics, and healthcare units can create productive scenarios with excellent cost-benefit. We can imagine reducing unnecessary costs such as those of professionals and physical spaces, for cases that are not required such resources. Another important aspect is that they allow integral monitoring of patients aiming at possible early diagnoses of diseases with high mortality rates, such as cardiovascular diseases. On the other hand, the approach to the Internet of Things (IoT) computing environments represents a set of interesting technologies that can support the aggregation of smart bands differentially. An example is a support for efforts aimed at the health status of the general population. In this dimension, this research presents a survey and a proposal oriented to the use of wearable devices in health care. Firstly, a set of works and prototypes already developed is presented. On the other hand, the main trends and challenges in the use of IoT devices for healthcare are pointed out. Based on the research developed, a low-cost and scalable computational environment is proposed. This environment is based on the IoT paradigm, encompassing the construction of a hardware prototype for health data collection and the development of two software components: a web system and a mobile application, which were developed for the processing and monitoring of the collected data. These data to be stored in computing resources of fog and cloud services with data analysis capability.