Applying the ISO/IEEE 11073 standards to wearable home health monitoring systems.
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this effort was to investigate the feasibility of applying the ISO/IEEE 11073 (a.k.a. X73) standards, originally intended for bedside monitoring in hospital environments, to wearable, multi-sensor monitoring systems designed for home healthcare. METHODS: The X73 upper-layer sub-standards (i.e., nomenclature specification, domain information model, application profiles, and vital sign device descriptions) were adopted and implemented on microcontroller-based sensor hardware to provide plug-and-play medical components. Three types of system elements (base stations, data loggers, and sensor units) perform the functionality required in this standards-based home health monitoring system and communicate using Bluetooth wireless modules. The base station incorporates a LabVIEW interface running on a personal computer. Each data logger and sensor unit is implemented on a microcontroller-driven embedded platform. Sensor units include wearable sensors (e.g., electrocardiograph, pulse oximeter) and nearby sensors (e.g., weight scale, ambient environment sensors). RESULTS: The standards-based prototype system with an open architecture achieves plug-and-play performance suitable for a home environment. Each wireless element in the body/home area network can automatically detect other nearby devices, associate with them, and exchange data with them as appropriate. CONCLUSIONS: With minor modifications, the X73 standards can be successfully applied to wearable, wireless, point-of-care systems in the home.