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development and milestones that are to be reached in
order to have a fully functional system, capable of be-
ing deployed in different areas.
2 RELATED WORK
Using computers or other internet capable devices has
always been of great help in health related develop-
ments, not only with respect to machines used, the
type of devices available in hospitals but also in the
way the general population has access to health infor-
mation.
The evolution of technology made possible the
adaptation of several of those developments to health
areas, such as the phone, video, clarification of doubts
via e-mail, medical websites, and the creation and us-
age of electronic health records. (Verma et al., 2008)
With the increase in the variety and offer of medi-
cal devices, it rose the idea of grouping a set of these
devices associated with an application in order to cre-
ate a system capable of taking measurements of its
users to provide some feedback on their vital signs,
which otherwise would not be possible if its users
lacked the resources to acquire these devices or to
make visits to health centers. Currently the health
kiosk is a system capable of collecting data from a
blood pressure monitor, a weighing scale and a pulse
oximeter. Nonetheless, it is not limited solely to these
devices as new ones can easily be added to the system.
The idea of a system capable of collecting bio-
metric data from its users and show them the re-
sults is not new, as it can be seen in public locations,
where most of the time static, offline systems with
a small set of instructions provide the user valuable
information. In parallel some other types of kiosks
can be seen in some locations such as the informa-
tion kiosks that serve the purpose of disseminating in-
formation throughout the population (Nicholas et al.,
2003; Leeman-Castillo et al., 2010), they can be in-
ternet connected with the intent of remotely changing
the available information.
A more approximated system to our proposal is
the Multi-User Health Kiosk developed in a joint ef-
fort of the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mel-
lon University. (Courtney et al., 2013) Their findings
provided helpful information on how to tackle the de-
velopment of a health kiosk. Creating a modular ar-
chitecture, to change in accordance to what is needed
or providing helpful, step by step, instructions on how
to use the devices, is information that, despite being
simple, has a major impact on the usability of the sys-
tem.
Since our aim with this system is to deploy it at
communities, public locations or medical facilities, a
multi-user approach must be made instead of creat-
ing a simple collection tool for a single user to use at
home. This has to take into account that the system
will be used by different users, with different charac-
teristics and different health needs.
A specific application case of this type of system
are elderly communities, as the need for attention on
their vital signs is higher due to the increased fragility
of human health over time. This type of deployment
has proven to be very positive with a high-level of
acceptance from its users. (Demiris et al., 2013)
The system is being developed making use
of commercially available Personal Health Devices
(PHDs). With the increased availability of these types
of devices, the price is more accessible, reducing the
total cost of assembling a system with these require-
ments. Some of the devices that are already working
with this system, and possible new devices, communi-
cate under a standardized form, which allows adding
new devices in a simpler way since the communica-
tion module handles all the devices.
The ISO/IEEE 11073 Personal Health Data (PHD)
Standards allow for the intended interoperability be-
tween some of the different devices that make up the
system. This standard appeared as a merge of differ-
ent standards such as ISO TC215, CEN TC251, IEEE
1073. (Nam et al., 2011) The Continua Health Al-
liance has a major impact both in the standard as well
as in the health care industry, trying to standardize
health devices in an orderly process, and also to make
it easier for developers to work around with these de-
vices.
Not having this standardization in some devices is
a problem since it means that an individual approach
must be made in order to interact with the devices. A
way to establish the communication has to be created,
as well as an interpretation of the messages sent by
the devices, and if needed to the devices.
The objective of reducing consultation times, and
keeping a more detailed patient’s history is achieved
by having access to these records. This implies that
the health kiosk in the future must be able to add
data to the patient’s Electronic Health Record (EHR)
this would improve the view the health professional
has on the patient’s history since the number of mea-
surements taken outside a medical facility should be
higher than inside one. Despite its benefits, it is not
an easy task to converge the user’s medical data of a
user and make it available at all medical facilities that
the user could visit. (Kalra, 2006) For now, a local
database serves the purpose of giving the patients the
possibility of saving and evaluating their history.
It is now possible, when using the health kiosk to