Context-aware multimedia computing in the intelligent hospital
Scott Mitchell, Mark Spiteri, John A. Bates, George Coulouris · 2000
This paper describes an application middleware that addresses the requirement for immediate high-quality multimedia communications in environments where users' work practices exhibit a large degree of physical mobility. A modern hospital is one such environment, with diverse, often mission-critical, communication needs that are not addressed adequately by existing systems. By integrating a multimedia framework with an event-based notification system, we are developing QoS DREAM, a platform that can provide seamless, context-sensitive communications, which can adapt to users' location and even follow them around. This paper describes how we are using QoS DREAM to design what we term our concept of the "Intelligent Hospital". We also introduce a usability study that we are currently engaged in. This is allowing us to determine a realistic set of communication and information access requirements within a busy hospital environment. We conclude by illustrating a prototype of the system.