Ubiquitous Health Monitoring Using Mobile Web Services

The ever-increasing rise in the number of chronically ill people is a growing burden on healthcare institutions. People with chronic illnesses such as heart disease, being among the leading causes for morbidity and mortality, need constant monitoring of their health conditions. Remote health monitoring of patients residing in their homes helps reduce healthcare costs. Current telemedicine solutions are used to remotely monitor vital signs such as blood pressure and blood sugar levels. These systems restrict the mobility of the patient, in addition to being limited in the number of vital signs that they support. The rapid developments in mobile devices coupled with the advancements in wireless access technologies have made mobile devices an increasingly attractive platform for delivering remote patient health monitoring services. This paper demonstrates the capability of mobile devices to provide mobile, low-cost, and efficient remote health monitoring through a mobile Web services-based approach. The proposed approach shows an agile, flexible, interoperable, and economical alternative to existing remote health monitoring systems. c © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.