The “Smartstone”: using smartphones as a telehealth gateway for senior citizens

:A possible solution to reduce healthcare costs in a world that is aging is the adoption of telehealth technologies. Several solutions appeared, in the past suggesting the use of smart devices (mobile phones or tablets) for supporting telehealth. Unfortunately, elderly people may have difficulties in the use of such devices even if user interfaces are becoming friendly and intuitive. This work introduces the concept of “Smartstone”, that is the use of a (low-cost) smartphone as a simple, effective, and portable gateway/edge server for mobile healthcare towards cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The Smartstone is designed in order to minimize the user interaction, thanks to its autonomous behavior. The adoption of smart devices as a building block ensures state-of-the-art connectivity and relatively high computational power, complemented by an ensemble of additional onboard sensors. In particular, results about the management of a new photoplethysmographic /bio-impedance monitor and a smart pill dispenser are presented in this work.