Authors:
Alexandru Serbanati
;
Marcello Morena
and
Laura Lancia
Affiliation:
Consorzio Roma Ricerche, Italy
Keyword(s):
Medical Device, Data Collection, Interoperability, mHealth, Machine-to-Machine, Bluetooth.
Abstract:
Healthcare has been changing in the last years due to several inputs, the main ones being moving from
assistive to preventive care and the introduction of patient-centric care models. In support to this tendency,
the number of consumer mobile applications for remote healthcare delivery is rapidly increasing and the use
of mobile medical sensor devices is also following. Standardization in the domain of data collection for
mHealth is still moving its first steps and, as a consequence, those who aim at developing remote healthcare
solutions must face significant problems related to the heterogeneity of sensor devices. In general, issues
related to low interoperability and low code-reusability of data collection software in mHeatlh severely limit
further developments in this sector. These issues have been addressed thanks to the Protocol Adapter which
provides a single, uniform interface for both the collection of rich data and the management of medical
devices. This article gives an ov
erview of this component and its development process in order to provide a
better understanding of its value when integrated in mHealth applications. After an introduction to the state
of the art, the requirements for the data collection in mHealth systems are discussed. The design phase is
then described along with the final architectural solution and the features of this free, open source
implementation for Android are discussed. Finally, future works on the Protocol Adapter are discussed in
the hope to attract the interest of device producers and of mHealth developers.
(More)