Ubiquitous Healthcare : Healthcare Systems and Applications enabled by Mobile and Wireless Technologies

This paper 1 addresses how mobile and wireless technologies can play a role in Ubiquitous Healthcare systems. First, we discuss background information and the differences between traditional computing, location-aware computing and ubiquitous computing. Then, we introduce what is meant by Ubiquitous Healthcare and using a network centric approach we describe the infrastructure and system architecture of the system involved. In the latter part of this paper we present a prototype environment for building systems and applications related to ubiquitous healthcare systems. We make use of mobile phones, off the shelf components and existing technologies in ubiquitous computing (i.e., wireless and mobile positioning technology, data acquisition from sensor and ad hoc networks) and data management (i.e., data capturing, data storage and retrieval, data/signal processing) to build middleware, APIs and tools for the development of systems and applications for ubiquitous healthcare systems. Finally, we discuss the functions and features of mobile phones and use examples to illustrate how mobile and wireless technologies can enable ubiquitous healthcare. Some of these examples are: Location Tracking, Vital Signs and Well-being Data Acquisition and Analysis, Fall Detection and Behaviour Tracking and Sleep Analysis. To conclude the paper we discuss the difficulties we encountered and the major obstacles in research and development on ubiquitous healthcare systems. Keywords-Ubiquitous Healthcare; Pervasive Healthcare; Mobile Health; Health Informatics. I. BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND MOTIVATIONS Recent advancements in communication technologies have not onlybrought aboutuniversal user connectivity but have brought the community into a new era of computing ubiquitous computing. But what is ubiquitous computing? And what are the differences between traditional and ubiquitous computing? In terms of the computation model, traditional computing is the combination of data acquisition, organisation and processing of data and data storage and retrieval. The integrity of the computation is based on the correct implementation of logic and mathematics. That is, if we provide the same input to a program, the same output will be produced. On the other hand, in location-aware or mobile computing, the results of the computation depend on the location from where the query is issued. For example, if the computer is 1 The work presented here is supported by the HKBU Research Centre for Ubiquitous Computing (RCUC) and the HKBU Strategic Development Fund under the grant no. HKBU SDF10-0526-P08. asked, “Where is the closest gas station? ”, the result will depend on the location at which the question is posed. Therefore, the correctness of the computation depends not only on the logic and mathematics but on the location as well. Furthermore, if we add timing information to our computation, the correctness of the computation will then depend on when and where the query is issued. This leads to ubiquitous computing or pervasive computing. Although there is a slight difference between the origin of the terms ubiquitous computing and pervasive computing, nowadays these two terms are used interchangeably. We have a 5-A Model to describe ubiquitous computing – Any data, Any device, Any network, Anytime and Anywhere. The 5-A Model can easily be recognised by a user who can utilise and process any data, using any device through any network, at anytime and anywhere. Ubiquitous computing is easily appreciated as a natural progression from traditional computing when users take a network centric approach and look into the connectivity of various kinds of networks. However, some researchers take the data centric approach and look into the data flow and information retrieval, data processing and storage issues of the systems. There are trends indicating that researchers are injecting intelligence into ubiquitous computing for implementing Smart Space or Smart World and eventually a ubiquitous intelligence community but we consider this beyond the scope of this paper. This paper is motivated by the advance in mobile and wireless technologies, the demands of new medical services and the increasing quality of services within healthcare systems. Ubiquitous healthcare is made possible by a good network infrastructure together with the necessary mobile and wireless technologies. Additionally, the sensing and positioning technologies for data acquisition and the portability of computation power through mobile devices, make it possible for ubiquitous healthcare systems and applications to deliver valuable healthcare services to patients, doctors and clinicians anytime and anywhere, as required. Thus, the objective of this paper is to investigate what kind of medical or healthcare services can be provided and what obstacles and difficulties mightbe encountered during the implementation and delivery of such services. The rest of the paper is organised as follows. In Section 2 we present related works and some current projects related to ubiquitous healthcare systems. We will discuss the system design and architecture of a typical ubiquitous healthcare system in Section 3 and further elaborate the functions and