The design and development of wearable biosensor systems for health monitoring has garnered lots of attention in the scientific community and the industry during the last years. Mainly motivated by increasing healthcare costs and propelled by recent technological advances in miniature biosensing devices, smart textiles, microelectronics, and wireless communications, the continuous advance of wearable sensor-based systems will potentially transform the future of healthcare by enabling proactive personal health management and ubiquitous monitoring of a patient's health condition. These systems can comprise various types of small physiological sensors, transmission modules and processing capabilities, and can thus facilitate low-cost wearable unobtrusive solutions for continuous all-day and any-place health, mental and activity status monitoring. This paper attempts to comprehensively review the current research and development on wearable biosensor systems for health monitoring. A variety of system implementations are compared in an approach to identify the technological shortcomings of the current state-of-the-art in wearable biosensor solutions. An emphasis is given to multiparameter physiological sensing system designs, providing reliable vital signs measurements and incorporating real-time decision support for early detection of symptoms or context awareness. In order to evaluate the maturity level of the top current achievements in wearable health-monitoring systems, a set of significant features, that best describe the functionality and the characteristics of the systems, has been selected to derive a thorough study. The aim of this survey is not to criticize, but to serve as a reference for researchers and developers in this scientific area and to provide direction for future research improvements.

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A Survey on Wearable Sensor-Based Systems for Health Monitoring and Prognosis

The aim of this review paper is to summarize recent developments in the field of wearable sensors and systems that are relevant to the field of rehabilitation. The growing body of work focused on the application of wearable technology to monitor older adults and subjects with chronic conditions in the home and community settings justifies the emphasis of this review paper on summarizing clinical applications of wearable technology currently undergoing assessment rather than describing the development of new wearable sensors and systems. A short description of key enabling technologies (i.e. sensor technology, communication technology, and data analysis techniques) that have allowed researchers to implement wearable systems is followed by a detailed description of major areas of application of wearable technology. Applications described in this review paper include those that focus on health and wellness, safety, home rehabilitation, assessment of treatment efficacy, and early detection of disorders. The integration of wearable and ambient sensors is discussed in the context of achieving home monitoring of older adults and subjects with chronic conditions. Future work required to advance the field toward clinical deployment of wearable sensors and systems is discussed.

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A review of wearable sensors and systems with application in rehabilitation.

The last 20 years have seen ever-increasing research activity in the field of human activity recognition. With activity recognition having considerably matured, so has the number of challenges in designing, implementing, and evaluating activity recognition systems. This tutorial aims to provide a comprehensive hands-on introduction for newcomers to the field of human activity recognition. It specifically focuses on activity recognition using on-body inertial sensors. We first discuss the key research challenges that human activity recognition shares with general pattern recognition and identify those challenges that are specific to human activity recognition. We then describe the concept of an Activity Recognition Chain (ARC) as a general-purpose framework for designing and evaluating activity recognition systems. We detail each component of the framework, provide references to related research, and introduce the best practice methods developed by the activity recognition research community. We conclude with the educational example problem of recognizing different hand gestures from inertial sensors attached to the upper and lower arm. We illustrate how each component of this framework can be implemented for this specific activity recognition problem and demonstrate how different implementations compare and how they impact overall recognition performance.

A tutorial on human activity recognition using body-worn inertial sensors

A Tutorial on Human Activity Recognition Using Body-Worn

In recent years, we have witnessed a rapid surge in assisted living technologies due to a rapidly aging society. The aging population, the increasing cost of formal health care, the caregiver burden, and the importance that the individuals place on living independently, all motivate development of innovative-assisted living technologies for safe and independent aging. In this survey, we will summarize the emergence of `ambient-assisted living” (AAL) tools for older adults based on ambient intelligence paradigm. We will summarize the state-of-the-art AAL technologies, tools, and techniques, and we will look at current and future challenges.

A Survey on Ambient-Assisted Living Tools for Older Adults

This paper describes an advanced care and alert portable telemedical monitor (AMON), a wearable medical monitoring and alert system targeting high-risk cardiac/respiratory patients. The system includes continuous collection and evaluation of multiple vital signs, intelligent multiparameter medical emergency detection, and a cellular connection to a medical center. By integrating the whole system in an unobtrusive, wrist-worn enclosure and applying aggressive low-power design techniques, continuous long-term monitoring can be performed without interfering with the patients' everyday activities and without restricting their mobility. In the first two and a half years of this EU IST sponsored project, the AMON consortium has designed, implemented, and tested the described wrist-worn device, a communication link, and a comprehensive medical center software package. The performance of the system has been validated by a medical study with a set of 33 subjects. The paper describes the main concepts behind the AMON system and presents details of the individual subsystems and solutions as well as the results of the medical validation.

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M. Vuskovic

Papers

AMON: a wearable multiparameter medical monitoring and alert system