An Overview of the Impact of Wireless Sensor Networks in Medical Health Care

The advancements in MicroElectoroMechanical Systems (MEMS) and communication technologies have resulted in the development of low cost and small size sensors which can be even injected into human body. This development has put enormous effect on medical healthcare and has replaced the traditional equipments and procedures with small sized sensors. This paper provides an overview of the impact of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) on medical healthcare. Wireless Sensor Networks can be found in various healthcare applications. This paper focuses on the applications of WSN which provides all-time monitoring to the user and either avoids the dangerous situation or is capable to take appropriate actions in case of emergency. We highlight the major challenges WSN faces when implemented in medical healthcare applications. KeywordsWireless Sensor Network, Medical Healthcare, Wireless Body Area Networks

[1]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  The Conference Assistant: combining context-awareness with wearable computing , 1999, Digest of Papers. Third International Symposium on Wearable Computers.

[2]  Patrik Floréen,et al.  A Framework for Distributed Activity Recognition in Ubiquitous Systems , 2005, IC-AI.

[3]  A. Shaw,et al.  Preventing cot death for infants in day care , 2010, 2010 IEEE Sensors Applications Symposium (SAS).

[4]  A. Turner,et al.  Home blood glucose biosensors: a commercial perspective. , 2005, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[5]  Majid Sarrafzadeh,et al.  Wireless sensor networks for health monitoring , 2005, The Second Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking and Services.

[6]  M. Welsh,et al.  Vital Signs Monitoring and Patient Tracking Over a Wireless Network , 2005, 2005 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference.

[7]  Biswanath Mukherjee,et al.  Wireless sensor network survey , 2008, Comput. Networks.

[8]  Timo Hämäläinen,et al.  A Survey of Application Distribution in Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005, EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw..

[9]  Artin Der Minassians,et al.  Wireless Sensor Networks for Home Health Care , 2007, 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (AINAW'07).

[10]  Mike Rayner,et al.  Coronary heart disease statistics 2004 , 2004 .

[11]  Abdelmadjid Bouabdallah,et al.  On QoS Provisioning in Context-Aware Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare , 2011, 2011 Proceedings of 20th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN).

[12]  Ibrahim Noorzaie,et al.  Survey Paper: Medical Applications of Wireless Networks , 2006 .

[13]  D. Puccinelli,et al.  Wireless sensor networks: applications and challenges of ubiquitous sensing , 2005, IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine.

[14]  Jessica Staddon,et al.  Efficient tracing of failed nodes in sensor networks , 2002, WSNA '02.

[15]  Jeffrey J. P. Tsai,et al.  A ubiquitous warning system for asthma-inducement , 2006, IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous, and Trustworthy Computing (SUTC'06).

[16]  Simon G. M. Koo,et al.  Addressing Context Awareness Techniques in Body Sensor Networks , 2007, 21st International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (AINAW'07).

[17]  John A. Stankovic,et al.  Context-aware wireless sensor networks for assisted living and residential monitoring , 2008, IEEE Network.

[18]  Haiying Zhou,et al.  A Real-Time Continuous Cardiac Arrhythmias Detection System: RECAD , 2005, 2005 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology 27th Annual Conference.

[19]  I. Panidis,et al.  Sudden death in hospitalized patients: cardiac rhythm disturbances detected by ambulatory electrocardiographic monitoring. , 1983, Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

[20]  Kyung Sup Kwak,et al.  Social Issues in wireless sensor networks with healthcare perspective , 2011, Int. Arab J. Inf. Technol..

[21]  F. Kargl,et al.  Security, Privacy and Legal Issues in Pervasive eHealth Monitoring Systems , 2008, 2008 7th International Conference on Mobile Business.