Using mobile systems to monitor an ambulatory patient

Abstract

Medical diagnostics and vital signs monitoring demands more technological solutions to cope with new methods of treatment. Continuous monitoring and information processing tools are vital to a physician with several patients under his care. In this work, a system that relies on agents and mobile and wireless devices is presented. Its use with small scale sensors allows to collect and analyse vital data in real-time, triggering appropriate reactions in case of eminent danger. This includes real-time notifications to practitioners. In cases in which the physician is unable to divide his attention among all his patients, the system is able to drive his attention to one patient only and, when it is necessary, to another one, according to their medical state. This concept represents a breakthrough in terms of the physician’s time and task management, being possible to apply it two major scenarios: patient recovery in a hospital environment or elderly living alone in a domestic environment. In that sense, we present a brief contextualiation of the problem as well as the architecture and technologies used to implement the proposed work.