Web-of-Things inspired e-Health platform for integrated diabetes care management

摘要

Integration of physical objects (or things) within the Web has become a goal for current and future health care systems. In this paper, we propose a new e-Health platform driven by the needs of integrated diabetes care management. Architecture of this platform that is designed to be consistent with the concepts of Web-of-Things (WoT) comprises a physical sensors layer linked to a health Web-portal layer via an existing network infrastructure. The physical layer incorporates wireless nodes; each of which comprises a set of medical sensors linked wirelessly to a humanoid robot. Unlike existing e-Health systems, the proposed system is designed to support self-management of Type 1 diabetes mellitus (TIDM) not only through remote data collection and monitoring of patients data, but also through offering a support platform for real-time decisions and long-term social and behavioral change. These support services are delivered to the patients over a distance through daily patient-robot interactions that are either automatically generated be the system or assigned by specialist physicians. A prototype e-health platform which incorporates all these healthcare attributes is designed, implemented, and its end-to-end functionality is tested successfully with the aid of NHS collaborators.