The increasing use of wireless networks and the constant miniaturization of electrical devices has empowered the development of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). In these networks various sensors are attached on clothing or on the body or even implanted under the skin. The wireless nature of the network and the wide variety of sensors offer numerous new, practical and innovative applications to improve health care and the Quality of Life. The sensors of a WBAN measure for example the heartbeat, the body temperature or record a prolonged electrocardiogram. Using a WBAN, the patient experiences a greater physical mobility and is no longer compelled to stay in the hospital. This paper offers a survey of the concept of Wireless Body Area Networks. First, we focus on some applications with special interest in patient monitoring. Then the communication in a WBAN and its positioning between the different technologies is discussed. An overview of the current research on the physical layer, existing MAC and network protocols is given. Further, cross layer and quality of service is discussed. As WBANs are placed on the human body and often transport private data, security is also considered. An overview of current and past projects is given. Finally, the open research issues and challenges are pointed out.

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A survey on wireless body area networks

The development of the wireless body area sensor network (BASN) is imperative for modern telemedicine and m-health, but security remains a formidable challenge yet to be resolved. As nodes of BASN are expected to be interconnected on or in the human body, the body itself can form an inherently secure communication pathway that is unavailable to all other kinds of wireless networks. This article explores the use of this conduit in the security mechanism of BASN; that is, by a biometrics approach that uses an intrinsic characteristic of the human body as the authentication identity or the means of securing the distribution of a cipher key to secure inter-BASN communications. The method was tested on 99 subjects with 838 segments of simultaneous recordings of electrocardiogram and photoplethysmogram. By using the interpulse interval (IPI) as the biometric trait, the system achieved a minimum half total error rate of 2.58 percent when the IPIs measured from signals, which were sampled at 1000 Hz, were coded into 128-bit binary sequences. The study opens up a few key issues for future investigation, including compensation schemes for the asynchrony of different channels, coding schemes, and other suitable biometric traits.

A novel biometrics method to secure wireless body area sensor networks for telemedicine and m-health

Healthcare applications are considered as promising fields for wireless sensor networks, where patients can be monitored using wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs). Current WMSN healthcare research trends focus on patient reliable communication, patient mobility, and energy-efficient routing, as a few examples. However, deploying new technologies in healthcare applications without considering security makes patient privacy vulnerable. Moreover, the physiological data of an individual are highly sensitive. Therefore, security is a paramount requirement of healthcare applications, especially in the case of patient privacy, if the patient has an embarrassing disease. This paper discusses the security and privacy issues in healthcare application using WMSNs. We highlight some popular healthcare projects using wireless medical sensor networks, and discuss their security. Our aim is to instigate discussion on these critical issues since the success of healthcare application depends directly on patient security and privacy, for ethic as well as legal reasons. In addition, we discuss the issues with existing security mechanisms, and sketch out the important security requirements for such applications. In addition, the paper reviews existing schemes that have been recently proposed to provide security solutions in wireless healthcare scenarios. Finally, the paper ends up with a summary of open security research issues that need to be explored for future healthcare applications using WMSNs.

https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/12/1/55/pdf

Security Issues in Healthcare Applications Using Wireless Medical Sensor Networks: A Survey

We present HealthGear, a real-time wearable system for monitoring, visualizing and analyzing physiological signals. HealthGear consists of a set of noninvasive physiological sensors wirelessly connected via Bluetooth to a cell phone which stores, transmits and analyzes the physiological data, and presents it to the user in an intelligible way. In this paper, we focus on an implementation of HealthGear using a blood oximeter to monitor the user's blood oxygen level and pulse while sleeping. We also describe two different algorithms for automatically detecting sleep apnea events, and illustrate the performance of the overall system in a sleep study with 20 volunteers.

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HealthGear: a real-time wearable system for monitoring and analyzing physiological signals

The new advances in sensor technology, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wireless communications favor the development of a new type of monitoring system that can provide patients with assistance anywhere and at any time. Of particular interest are the monitoring systems designed for people that suffer from heart arrhythmias, due to the increasing number of people with cardiovascular diseases. PDAs can play a very important role in these kinds of systems because they are portable devices that can execute more and more complex tasks. The main questions answered in this paper are whether PDAs can perform a complete electrocardiogram beat and rhythm classifier, if the classifier has a good accuracy, and if they can do it in real time. In order to answer these questions, in this paper, we show the steps that we have followed to build the algorithm that classifies beats and rhythms, and the obtained results, which show a competitive accuracy. Moreover, we also show the feasibility of incorporating the built algorithm into the PDA.

Real-time classification of ECGs on a PDA

The forthcoming wide availability of high bandwidth public wireless networks will give rise to new mobile health care services. Towards this direction the MobiHealth project has developed and trialed a highly customisable vital signals' monitoring system based on a Body Area Network (BAN) and an m-health service platform utilizing next generation public wireless networks. The developed system allows the incorporation of diverse medical sensors via wireless connections, and the live transmission of the measured vital signals over public wireless networks to healthcare providers. Nine trials with different health care cases and patient groups in four different European countries have been conducted to test and verify the system, the service and the network infrastructure for its suitability and the restrictions it imposes to mobile health care applications.

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Mobile Patient Monitoring: The MobiHealth System

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated.

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Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

The concept behind the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002) was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. For patients, these technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. For health professionals the technology offers access to information and communication services from a mobile device, thus enabling mobility for the individual professional and supporting the operation of distributed ‘virtual' healthcare teams (sensu Pitsillides, 1999).

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Mobihealth: Mobile Services for Health Professionals

The wide availability of high bandwidth public wireless networks as well as the miniaturisation of medical sensors and network access hardware allows the development of advanced ambulant patient monitoring systems. The MobiHealth project developed a complete system and service that allows the continuous monitoring of vital signals and their transmission to the health care institutes in real time using GPRS and UMTS networks. The MobiHealth system is based on the concept of a Body Area Network (BAN) allowing high personalization of the monitored signals and thus adaptation to different classes of patients. The system and service has been trialed in four European countries and for different patient cases. First results confirm the usefulness of the system and the advantages it offers to patients and medical personnel.

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N.T. Dokovski

Papers

Mobile Patient Monitoring: The MobiHealth System

Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

Mobihealth: Mobile Services for Health Professionals

MobiHealth: ambulant patient monitoring over next generation public wireless networks.