Empowering Patients to Lead Fully Mobile Lives
From: IST Results - 03/02/2005

The IST-funded MobiHealth project has developed a mobile health care system
in which patients' vital signs are remotely monitored by wearable, wireless
sensors that form a body area network (BAN) linked to a mobile base unit that
sends the data to the doctor or health care center via UMTS or GPRS. Project
coordinator Rainer Herzog with Ericsson Enterprise explains that "different
sensors can be added to monitor different body functions depending on the
patient's illness." European MobiHealth pilot programs included a Swedish
implementation to monitor respiration and physical activity, a deployment in
Germany to keep track of cardiac patients, a Dutch trial involving pregnant
women and trauma patients, and a Spanish test involving rehabilitation and
home care. Herzog says the system was well received by almost every trial
participant: Patients said monitoring eased their minds and encouraged them
to be more active, and doctors said the systems could lower the amount of
work they have to do while raising the quality of care. Herzog says the
MobiHealth technology is being commercialized for four initial areas: The
pharmaceutical industry, chronic disease patients, at-risk patients, and
patients hospitalized for surgery. He notes that MobiHealth could also be
used to monitor the disabled and elderly, since the BAN can trigger alarms if
the patient falls and does not get up. Mobile health schemes will be
especially beneficial to health care providers by helping them lower the
costs and maintain the standards of European public health systems. The
MobiHealth partners are currently developing an analytical tool for
processing the raw data the system receives and rendering it in a simple
format for health care workers 

Read the entire article at:
http://istresults.cordis.lu/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/74573

Links:
What is MobiHealth?
http://www.mobihealth.org/

MobiHealth Integrates RFID Technology with Wireless Clinical Solutions
http://medical.press-world.com/v/62614.html

MobiHealth Body Area Networks new promise to meet mobile health care challenges
http://www.hoise.com/vmw/03/articles/vmw/LV-VM-10-03-3.html