Enhancing Wireless Patient Monitoring by Integrating Stored and Live Patient Information

Abstract

Patient monitoring using wireless technologies has been considered for improving the quality of healthcare to an increased number of patients, including those suffering from physical and cognitive disabilities. For such patients, comprehensive and reliable wireless patient monitoring system should be designed that can operate autonomously. In this paper, we propose that comprehensive patient monitoring should involve the use of stored healthcare information and transmission of live vital signs. In simple terms, the use of stored knowledge (such as nominal vital signs and patient's individual thresholds) could compensate for the limited resources of underlying wireless networks, especially under times of significant traffic. This will allow the delivery of patient related information to one of more healthcare professionals in reasonable time as the traffic per monitoring event is reduced. To enhance the quality of patient monitoring, we present reliable wireless architecture and propose that context-awareness should be utilized in the healthcare delivery decision