Internet of things for medication control: e-health architecture and service implementation

Abstract

The use of Radio Frequency Identification technology (RFID) in medical context enables drug identification but also a rapid and, of course, precise identification of patients, physicians, nurses or any other health caregiver. Combining RFID tag identification with structured and secure Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, one can establish a ubiquitous and quick access to any type of medical related records, as long as one can control and adequately secure all the Internet mediated interactions. This paper presents an e-Health service architecture, along with the corresponding Internet of Things prototype implementation, that makes use of RFID tags and Electronic Product Codes (EPC) standards, in order to easily establish in a ubiquitous manner a medication control system. The system, presented and tested, has a web interface and allowed for a first evaluation of the e-health proposed service. As the service is mainly focused on elderly Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions, all these technologies - RFID, EPC, Object Naming Service (ONS) and IoT – have been integrated into a suitable system, able to promote better patient/physician, patient/nurse and, generally, any patient/health caregiver, interactions. The whole prototype service, entitled "RFID-based IoT for Medication Control", and its web interface are presented and evaluated.