Rural areas. A picture of peace. But. When it comes to medical services, at times a picture of scarce resources, of limited access to advance services, a disturbing picture. Yes, of course, there are medical facilities, but often with limited staffing, and lacking staff with specialty training.
All this impacts the ability to get medical data from the service
and medical information from the patient, be it from home, from work, or even
in a medical facility.
One mitigating factor for the last ten or so years has been Wireless
Sensors and networks that transmit sensor data.This short blog highlights some of the ongoing work in wireless sensor data capturing, and the impact IPv6 will have on electronic health monitoring.
Wireless
Communication
There is rapid development in the fields of wireless
communication, smart sensors, and the automatic diagnosis and treatment of
patients. Two bottlenecks, or speed
bumps, are now slowing down progress.
First, passive AND active collections of physiological AND
environmental data of remote patients must be recorded to be able to make
medical recommendations to a remote patient.
Second, the available networks just flat out can not handle all
the data required. Think of several simultaneously taken studies via remote
x-rays on remote patients, or two, three patients that are on their way via
EMT, and add ten, twelve sensors, and add observations about light,
temperature, humidity, dust, fumes, spillages, and you get the picture.
Sensors
in a Wireless Network
Many years ago, starting with the
Proceedings of ICOMeS 2012 Page 12, a picture emerged that saw a patient
wear a monitor that would record among other data particles, pressure, noise
level, audio, video, carbon dioxide level, oxygen level, blood pressure,
enzymes, etc. And all this in real time, discrete and noninvasive. These
sensors provide non-invasive measurements, scalability, always-on, ease of
deployment, plug-n-play capability.
The real challenge is network capabilities. The current network protocol, namely IPv4,
can't be used. Full Stop.
IPv6 to
the rescue
The emerging, new Internet Protocol, IPv6, CAN. IPv6 provides a
foundation for these concerns of data overload with its features such as large
address space, built-in security, ease of encryption, address
autoconfiguration, mobility, extensibility, etc.
IPv6 addresses the challenge that will affect Sensor Network
performance and safety. IPv6 will make wearable health monitoring systems a
cloud-based service for use in telemedicine.
IETF [1 and 2] has
recommended for years the implementation of
IPv6 to make networks interoperable.
The
Future
Some wearable physiological monitoring sensors have been developed
and implemented to measure and monitor heart rate, blood pressure, body
temperature, respiration rate, blood oxygen, blood sugar level,
electrocardiography (ECG), and electroencephalography (EEG). These sensors are
miniaturized and capable of wireless transmission of sensed data. ALL need to
have IPv6 implemented.
Patient monitoring will additionally benefit from sensor networks
with global routable large pools of IP addresses, ensuring end to end
communication with each sensor from anywhere at any time. This is easily
achievable with IPv6 due to its large address space and address self-configuration.
-
This short note is based on several Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Mobile e-Health, and a Webinar by IOSC, England, on 2/17/17
[1] P. Shaltis, A. Reisner, and H. Asada. Wearable, Cuff-less
PPG-based Blood Pressure Monitor with Novel Height Sensor. 2006; pp. 908-911.
[2] Y. M. Chi, and G. Cauwenberghs, Wireless Non-contact EEG/ECG
Electrodes for Body Sensor Networks, in Proceedings of the 2010 International
Conference on Body Sensor Networks, Singapore, Singapore, pp. 297-301.
doi:10.1109/BSN.2010.52
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