Mobile acquisition and monitoring system for improved diabetes management using emergent wireless and web technologies

Presented is a mobile-health (m-health) system architecture utilizing Bluetooth and web technologies for remote health data acquisition and monitoring. The proposed system aims at improving chronic disease management and diabetes in particular using a combination of existing patients' medical sensors, PDAs and PDAs-related Bluetooth technology. This offers a relatively low-cost solution compared to equivalent customized health data acquisition systems. At the patient end, the health data is acquired serially from the medical sensors and sent to the mobile devices using Bluetooth connectivity. The acquired data are then transmitted to a remote health hub using core IP network. Design and implementation of the Wireless Data Acquisition Module (WDAM), wireless connectivity protocols, and architecture of the remote health hub applications are presented in this paper. The distributed nature of the proposed system allows for continuous acquisition and monitoring of patients' data anytime, anywhere and by anyone with modest technological background. Likewise, the patient's health providers can continuously monitor the acquired data of their patients for better disease management. Performance of the developed data acquisition system is assessed experimentally and seamless data acquisition and monitoring have been demonstrated.