Chronic diseases have become the leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Major chronic diseases currently account for almost 60% of all deaths, and this contribution is expected to rise up to 73% by 2020. An integrated approach is needed for detection, prevention, and monitoring of these diseases. For better and specialized healthcare services, there is a need to develop a technology that should be fast, reliable, secure, accurate, and economical. In this chapter, the authors have presented an architectural design for wearable healthcare monitoring systems. The main motivation behind this architectural design is to improve the efficiency, accuracy, and generosity of WHMS. The architecture design divides the system into three layers or subsystems. The chapter provides a detailed description of subsystems, components, functionalities, requirements, and realization mechanisms along with their merits and demerits. The resolution of design issues like data fusion, data delivery, data processing, security, accuracy, and efficiency are the main points of this architecture design.
TopIntroduction
Currently, world’s population is increasing at the rate of 1.1% and so is the number of patients. Disease rates from poor lifestyle choices such as lack of physical activity, poor diet, stress, smoking and overuse of alcohol are accelerating globally, advancing across every region and pervading all socioeconomic classes. To provide impeccable health care services to the society healthcare sector needs a transformation. For better and specialized healthcare services, there is a need to develop a technology that should be fast, reliable, secure, accurate, and economical. Such astonishing expectations can only be contented with Wearable Healthcare Monitoring Systems (WHMS), which will make use of different ICT based technologies to provide continuous healthcare support to the user. A system which will provide complete mobility, privacy, security and it will take care of the patient even in the absence of a physician. A system which will continuously monitor the patient’s biosignals along with the physical activities performed. A system designed in such a manner that it will provide complete generosity and delineate the requisites of a broad range of diseases. The system which will make use of different wearable sensors, smartphones, communication, and computation technologies to provide healthcare services. In this chapter, the authors are going to present system architecture for WHMS to envision this expectation in an effective manner. Through this architectural design, the authors are attempting to answer the following question frequently raised by researchers and system designers.
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Which design alternative will be most suitable for system design?
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How to improve the efficiency and accuracy of system?
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How to decrease the cost of wearable monitoring systems?
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How to make the system ubiquitous in nature to take over a broad range of diseases?
The answers to this entire question can be found in a sound architectural design. The architectural design of WHMS presented in this chapter is divided into various sections. The first Section of this chapter briefly describes the basic working of the WHMS and its subsystems. In the second, third, and fourth sections the authors have described the three subsystems of WHMS that includes the body area network, mobile base unit and the back-end server unit. Each of these sections further includes an elaborated discussion about the functionalities, requirements, and architectural alternative available with the subsystems. At the last, the chapter has been ended with some concluding remarks and future scopes.
TopWearable Healthcare Monitoring System Architecture
The architectural design of Wearable Healthcare Monitoring System (WHMS) plays a vital role in making them generic in nature. The structure of WHMS is designed in such a manner that it can be modified easily for monitoring of many diseases. The proposed architecture of WHMS consists of many standards and semantics that are necessary to provide interoperability, data sharing and knowledge sharing over various platforms.
The WHMS is architectured using the product line architecture to decrease the designing and developing time and achieve a high quality product with low cost (Paliwal & Kiwelekar, 2015; Paliwal & Bunglowala, 2017). The system will be designed with two different perspectives product and process (Pawar, Jones, Van, & Hermens, 2012; Paliwal, & Kiwelekar, 2013). From the product perspective, the architecture is having three layers, consisting of three different subsystems Wearable Body Area Network (WBAN), Mobile Base Unit (MBU), and Back-End Server (BESys). On the other hand, the process perspective consists of data acquisition, initial data processing and transmission, biosignal interpretation, notification and intervention. Figure 1 shows a basic architectural design for wearable healthcare monitoring system.
Figure 1. Architecture design for wearable healthcare monitoring system