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properly the patient; (iv) restoration algorithms to recover the ECG missing packets,
or (v) extended power management models to save energy, all are illustrative exam-
ples of specific QoS deployments in e-health and e-emergency systems. Notwith-
standing all this variety, healthcare systems need to support QoS at multiple protocol
levels in order to meet a common and final goal: to provide a pervasive, valuable and
totally reliable assistance to any patient with risk abnormalities.
We have concluded that neither Bluetooth nor IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee standards are
able to satisfy the QoS requirements demanded by the case-study herein presented.
To tackle this limitation, a hybrid medium access beacon-based model has been pro-
posed to fulfill such QoS requirements. Currently, we are testing and improving this
model in an experimental testbed.
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