Towards a medical cyber-physical system for home telecare of high-risk pregnancy

The paper introduces the problem of designing a medical cyber-physical system (MCPS) for telecare of pregnant women at home. Design challenges and requirements have been shortly explained, as well as the innovative elements of the underlined holistic design methodology and the architecture. The system consists of the Body Area Network (BAN) of advanced sensors that are interconnected on a body of a pregnant woman, the Personal Area Network (PAN) that is responsible for embedded processing of physical signals, smart alarms, and a transmission channel to the Central Surveillance Centre located in a hospital. It is expected that dependable telemedical systems will provide a high societal value to high-risk pregnant women, especially those in dispersed rural areas.