MobiHealth 1 : Mobile Healthcare IST-2001-36006 http://www.mobihealth.org Val Jones, Aart van Halteren, Richard Bults Dimitri Konstantas, Ing Widya University of Twente Center for Telematics and Information Technology – APS NL-7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Rainer Herzog Ericsson GmbH Maximilianstrasse 36/RG D-80539 Munich, Germany Abstract The use of health BANs together with advanced wireless communications (GPRS/UMTS) enables remote management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies whilst maximizing patient mobility. During the MobiHealth project a generic Body Area Network for health monitoring was developed. Biosignals are measured by the BAN and transmitted to a remote healthcare location. The MobiHealth trials focus on home care, trauma care and ambulatory monitoring. In addition to serving patients, remote monitoring can also benefit non-patients going about their daily life activities. Introduction The EU MobiHealth project (IST-2001-36006) is bringing together a number of technologies including Body Area Networks (BANs), vital signs sensors and wireless communications to provide mobile health services for patients and for health professionals. In our definition, a Body Area Network is “a collection of (inter) communicating devices which are worn on the body, providing an integrated set of personalised services to the user” [WWRF2001]. When the devices of a BAN measure physiological signals or perform other actions for health-related purposes we call this kind Body Area Network a health BAN. Communication within a BAN may be either wired or wireless, or any combination of the two, and is known as intra-BAN communication. Communication between a BAN and another network is known as extra-BAN communication. The vision of the MobiHealth project is to develop an open extensible BAN platform which allows integration of different health functions by means of a plug-and-play approach. An open BAN platform enables integration of devices from different manufacturers into a single healthcare services platform. The combination of health BANs and advanced wireless communications enables, amongst other things, remote management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies whilst maximising patient mobility. The objective of the MobiHealth project is to develop and trial a generic Body Area Network for health monitoring using 2.5/3G for extra-BAN communication. Patients’ biosignals are measured by the BAN and 1 The MobiHealth (No IST-2001-36006) project is supported by the Commission of the European Union under the 5 th EU research framework.