A Monitoring System of Human's Health Using Wireless Sensors
Yoshito Tobe, Yasuaki Uehara · 2006
Healthcare monitoring for elderly people has recently been paid much attention in many countries with long life expectancy. Wireless sensors attached to a human body are considered useful in automating the healthcare monitoring process. We propose a system of such a monitoring system called Always-on Karte. In contrast to previous works, our design goals are focused on monitoring and continuous analysis. To reduce the energy consumption caused by wireless data transmission and consider wireless connectivity, the wireless sensors conduct adaptive reporting; the transmission is determined based on the perceived state. As an embodied object of Always-on Karte, we have developed an AoK mule. The AoK mule consists of tiny pressure sensors connected with MicaZ Motes and aims at analyzing the soundness of walking actions. In this paper, we describe the preliminary result using the AoK mule and future visions. INTRODUCTION With the advent of a growing aging population in many countries including Japan with long life expectancy and low birth rate, technology is needed to monitor the health of elderly people at home. The diagnosis of the health condition is not simple because self-monitoring without medical specialists may cause misjudgment. To assist such diagnosis, there are several trials by several companies to conduct such monitoring using a home sensor network [5]. Based on the above background, we propose a system of monitoring human's health condition called Always-on Karte. ( is originally a German word and is being used as a word for a diagnosis sheet described by medical doctors in Japan.) In contrast to conventional works, Always-on Karte sets two goals: monitoring and continuous analysis. (1) unconscious monitoring: People may feel reluctant to wear a monitoring equipment. Even if a person agrees with wearing the equipment, he/she may sometimes forget to re-wear it. Thus we base our design on using objects not conceived as monitoring equipment. _____________ † Tokyo Denki University {yoshito, u1}@unl.im.dendai.ac.jp ‡ CREST Japan Science and Technology Agency