MHealth Project

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• M-Health Project

Prof. Kambiz Madani Director - Communications
Compunetics Research Group University of
Westminster
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Definition

• Mobile Healthcare the provision of Real Time
  patient care.
• No matter where the clinician is
• No matter where the patient is

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Mobile Healthcare Technologies

• Mobile Healthcare (M-Health for short) can be
  regarded as the integration of technologies of
  medical sensors, mobile computing, and wireless
  communications into a system of medical
  assistance.

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Motivations behind Mobile Healthcare

• Increasingly Decentralized patients
• Increasing Demand for Efficiency in Healthcare
• Rapidly rising cost of healthcare
• Advances in technology

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New Advances in Technology

• Devices converging PDAs, cell phones, pagers.
• The processing power and storage increases.
• A mobile phone can now retrieve, store, process
  and forward the users medical data.
• Connectivity 3G networks provide the means
  continuous IP connectivity, as well as for high
  speed data transfer.

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The Challenge of New Technology

• New Technologies Create
• New Basic Knowledge
• More Data Available
• New Expectations Applications
• Mobility in Healthcare will Require a Higher
  Level of System Reliability and Performance than
  Mobility in General.

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Aspects of Mobility

• Types of Devices Used
• Form Factor
• PDA
• Tablet computer
• mobile phone
• Device Format
• Thin client
• Thick client
• Issues
• Battery life
• Weight
• Display Size

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Aspects of Mobility cont

• Topology
• Personal Area Networks (10-30 feet) Bluetooth
• Local Area Networks (10-30 meters) Wi Fi (802.11
  a, b, g)
• Wide Area Networks (everywhere) Cellular (GSM,
  3G CDMA,)
• Information Types
• Alphanumeric (lab values)
• Graphical (medical images, photos)
• Voice (telephony, dictation)
• Performance
• Seamless Integration
• Reliability

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Application Examples

• Monitoring of patients vital signs
• Diabetes
• Asthma
• Hypertension
• ECG
• Predictive usage in order to minimise the needs
  for medication
• Improving the quality of life

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West Focus M-Health Project

• Aims Objectives
• Potential Benefits
• Demonstrator System
• Data Flow Procedure Features
• Communication Protocol
• Wireless Communications

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Aims Objectives

• M-Health Project aims to investigate the
  infrastructure needed for the medical healthcare
  professional to monitor ubiquitously the patient
  by using mobile communication technologies (such
  as GPRS, Bluetooth and GPS).
• To design build a Concept Demonstrator.

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Potential Benefits

• Increasing the physician productivity and
  efficiency.
• Wireless sensors enable the patients freedom of
  movements and therefore promote new ways of
  monitoring the patient.
• Providing clinicians remote access to patients
  information eliminates the need to manually
  locate and search through patients data.
• Enabling telemonitoring in emergency scenarios
  and making remote diagnosis possible.

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Demonstrator System

• The patient is provided with a wearable wireless
  sensor. The signal from the sensor is captured in
  a Node situated in a mobile phone.
• The system allows ubiquitous access to patients
  data and medical information in real-time via the
  mobile phone.
• The medical data is stored processed in a
  server, and can be used for establishing
  diagnostics and treatments.

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Demonstrator System cont

• The Demonstrator prototype has the following key
  elements
• Bluetooth devices
• Nonin Oximeter, the first oximetry solution using
  Bluetooth wireless technology
• Bluetooth GPS receiver
• 3G Mobile handset (Nokia 6630)
• Application server

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Data Flow Process

• MIDlet that runs on the mobile phone monitors
  Bluetooth devices (Oximeter, GPS).
• Based on the readings a Packet is constructed.
• The packet is then sent to the Server for
  processing.
• Packets can also be saved locally (on MMC card).

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Data flow cont

• Sensor and GPS both implement the serial port
  profile (SPP) .
• SPP supports the implementation of J2ME Bluetooth
  applications.
• MIDlets use the file system of the mobile phone.

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Data flow cont

• Mobile phone has the ability for data storage
  needed for caching and backup.
• The application server will accept the data and
  centralize it in a database.
• This database will serve as a data source to
  different client applications used by medical
  personnel.

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Application server

• Application server centralises the received data
  and presents it to the user as
• Raw data
• Formatted as graphs

App Server
DB
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Features

• Packet includes the device UUID, and therefore
  allows readings from different types of devices
  through Bluetooth to be distinguished.
• Packets can be saved locally (on the phone) as
  well as on the Server, and therefore the data is
  never lost.
• Packet prioritisation means that the most recent
  data is sent first, and the older data follows
  next.

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Communication Protocol

• Protocol for communication with the devices is
  implemented in J2ME.
• Since the MIDlet will communicate with two
  devices at the same time, a multi-threaded mobile
  application was implemented in order to handle
  all the incoming data streams.
• Raw data is collected by the mobile phone, this
  raw data is cached and then passed to the server
  through an IP connection.

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Wireless Communications

• Bluetooth technology is used for communication
  between the medical sensors and the mobile
  phone.
• Communication between mobile phone and the server
  is based on public wireless packet data services
  such as GPRS.

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Conclusions

• A brief overview of Mobile Healthcare technology
  was presented.
• West Focus M-Health Project was described.
• The architecture and operations of the Concept
  Demonstrator system was presented.
• Potential benefits and future applications of
  this new technology was discussed.