Sensor networks for medical care

By Victor Shnayder, Bor-rong Chen, Konrad Lorincz, Thaddeus R. F. Fulford Jones, Matt Welsh. ACM International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, 2005

796 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Sensor networks have the potential to greatly impact many aspects of medical care. By outfitting patients with wireless, wearable vital sign sensors, collecting detailed real-time data on physiological status can be greatly simplified. However, there is a significant gap between existing sensor network systems and the needs of medical care. In particular, medical sensor networks must support multicast routing topologies, node mobility, a wide range of data rates and high degrees of reliability, and security. This paper describes our experiences with developing a combined hardware and software platform for medical sensor networks, called CodeBlue. CodeBlue provides protocols for device discovery and publish/subscribe multihop routing, as well as a simple query interface that is tailored for medical monitoring. We have developed several medical sensors based on the popular MicaZ and Telos mote designs, including a pulse oximeter, EKG and motion-activity sensor. We also describe a new, miniaturized sensor mote designed for medical use. We present initial results for the CodeBlue prototype demonstrating the integration of our medical sensors with the publish/subscribe routing substrate. We have experimentally validated the prototype on our 30-node sensor network testbed, demonstrating its scalability and robustness as the number of simultaneous queries, data rates, and transmitting sensors are varied. We also study the effect of node mobility, fairness across multiple simultaneous paths, and patterns of packet loss, confirming the system’s ability to maintain stable routes despite variations in node location and

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Computer Networks and Communications, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/86485c12cc98a7f1adbac4032211c6d18c8c75e3

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Citations in the corpus

Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey (2014, neutral): “CodeBlue[121] Medical Care Wired ZigBee/Mesh N/A Motion, EKG, Pulse Oximeter”
Body Area Networks: A Survey (2010, methodology): “CodeBlue [47] In this project, several types of body sensors (e.”
A Survey on Ambient Intelligence in Health Care (2013, positive): “Moreover, by equipping patients with wireless, wearable, or environmental vital sign sensors, collecting detailed real-time data on physiological status can enable innovative activities as autonomous rehabilitation and therapy [190]–[192].”
Smart wearable systems: Current status and future challenges (2012, methodology): “[120] CodeBlue’ mote based system Pulse oximetry, ECG, EMG, mobility activity”
Enabling technologies for wireless body area networks: A survey and outlook (2009, background): “These solutions better suit WBAN deployment scenarios in a limited area (e.g., a hospital or a house), as in the cases of CodeBlue [ 1 ] and AID-N [2].”
Issues in data fusion for healthcare monitoring (2008, neutral): “There are several products [10, 5, 3, 39].”
They can hear your heartbeats: non-invasive security for implantable medical devices (2011, background): “Recent work, however, has demonstrated that wireless connectivity can be exploited to compromise the confidentiality of IMDs’ transmitted data or to send unauthorized commands to IMDs—even commands that cause the device to deliver an electric shock to the patient.”
A Survey on Wearable Sensor-Based Systems for Health Monitoring and Prognosis (2010, methodology): “Researchers in Harvard University have developed CodeBlue [37], a medical sensor network platform for multipatient monitoring environments based on the ZigBee compliant MicaZ and Telos motes, including custom designed biosensor boards for pulse oximetry, three-lead ECG, EMG, and motion activity.”
Ensuring Safety, Security, and Sustainability of Mission-Critical Cyber–Physical Systems (2012, background): “Examples of SI-CPS include - health monitoring systems [44], [45], smart-spaces [46], and awarehomes [47].”
Wireless sensor networks for healthcare: A survey (2010, neutral): “Also, a discovery protocol is used for CodeBlue nodes to discover each other and determine the capabilities of their sensor devices.”