Information Management Infrastructure for Telemonitoring in Healthcare

Gert Brettlecker, Hans-Jörg Schek, Heiko Schuldt

In Proceedings

2004/9

Tagungsband der 49. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Medizinische Informatik, Biometrie u

Innsbruck, Austria

Chronic ailments such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and diabetes affect a significant number of the western population. Telemonitoring (TM) allows healthcare institutions to take care of their patients while they are out of hospital, which is especially useful for managing various chronic diseases. A prognosis for the year 2013 expects the use of TM to significantly increase. New trends in sensor technologies, ubiquitous computing, and home automation enable a unobtru-sive, non-invasive TM which is applicable to an increasing number of patients and diseases. Caregivers can be specialists in hospitals or general practitioners. Mobile and stationary devices build up a networked system to allow for acquisition, processing, storing, and forwarding of sensory data. The TM system receives its input from sensory data sources such as skin electrodes, non-invasive blood-pressure monitors, and accelerometers which deliver their results continuously. As a consequence, the system must process incoming data on the fly, because storage capacity is limited and in most cases communication facilities are too unreliable and limited for simple data forwarding strategies. The need for local online-processing is also driven by the prevalent demand for rapid detection of problematic health conditions based on incoming data and by thresholds on sensory data processing results.