Wireless communication for medical applications: the HEARTS experience

Wireless networks provide all the functionality of wire-line networks without the physical constraints of the wire itself giving an interesting alternative to phone-line and powerline wiring systems. With a wireless network, physicians can actively monitor a patient's vital signs from anywhere in a hospital. HEARTS (health early alarm recognition and telemonitoring system) is a research project having the major aim to provide support for prevention and monitoring heart disease, based on advanced technology. The HEARTS idea is to gather biometric and environmental data coming from patients during both hospitalization phase and in their normal lifetime activities, using wireless networks. The wireless network and its composing devices are called personal health network (PHN). WPAN and WLAN technologies have been investigated, each with its pros and cons, for use in health monitoring activities inside hospitals and at home, for improving patient mobility, and to provide patients for "last interconnection hop" to the infrastructure network. Technological and operational problems have been addressed concerning bluetooth, IEEE 802.11b (WiFi), GSM/GPRS/UMTS wireless transports, all of them tested and some of them concretely adopted inside the HEARTS framework.