mPHASiS: Mobile patient healthcare and sensor information system

Pervasive care and chronic disease management to reduce institutionalization is a priority for most western countries. The realization of next generation ubiquitous and pervasive healthcare systems will be a challenging task, as these systems are likely to involve a complex structure. Such systems will consist of various devices, ranging from resource-constrained sensors and actuators to complex multimedia devices, supporting time critical applications. This is further compounded by cultural and socio-economical factors that must be addressed for next generation healthcare systems to be widely diffused and used. In this study, the requirements for a vital sign monitoring solution space is derived and mPHASiS is developed based on these requirements. mPHASiS is an end to end solution not only providing sensor networking and vital sign monitoring but also closing the loop by signaling alert messages to the caregiver and allowing pervasive access to vital signs of a patient using smartphones over a heterogeneous network. A role based access control mechanism is developed to limit access to sensitive data. The end to end delay and delay variations for both vital sign data collection and pervasive access are analyzed. mPHASiS is developed as a complementary solution augmenting functionality of a hospital information system and can be loosely couple with the hospital information system using webservices.