Seamless Service Delivery Solution For mHealth Application

Abstract

ICT opens up many new opportunities for higher-value products and services, of which Personal Health System (PHS) is just one of the possibilities. PHS for remote management of diseases, treatment and rehabilitation, outside hospitals and care centers is based on closed-loop approaches and integrates wearable, portable or implantable devices into a subsystem coupled with appropriate platforms and services. This article discusses such subsystem that we called mHealth Console and puts an accent on gathering and analysis, interpretation and use of the multiparametric data, in conjunction with established or newly created medical knowledge, for shared patient-doctor decision support systems. After discussing business motivation for remote provisioning of healthcare services in Section1, the paper continues by describing a framework for ICT deployment on Section 2. The proposed service delivery architecture is based on Over the Top (OTT) delivery principles and enables perspective mHealth provider to reach service users (e.g. patients, health insurance, health providers, employers, pharmacies etc ) irrespective of their locations and type of physical connectivity in that location. The Section 3 continues by offering a detailed functional architecture for mHealth Console and Portal, description of signalling message flows for different SIP and DLNA based use cases. The article concludes that mHealth system is a powerful ICT based solution that process comprehensive sensor data, both environmental and behavioral, and is critical component enabling provision of monitoring and rehabilitation services to the patients. The features of the proposed solution such as independent communication session initiation, seamless and automated exchange of stored and real time information and use of devices of affordable price, makes the proposed architecture a viable solution for seamless delivery of mHealth services.

Article history: Received (29.11.2010); Revised (21.12.2010); Accepted (24.12.2010)