Monitoring chronically ill patients using mobile technologies

Abstract

Using mobile technologies to remotely monitor patients has many potential benefits, not the least of which is the improvement in quality of life which patients experience when they are in their home environment rather than a hospital. This becomes particularly important when patients are suffering from a chronic disease such as diabetes, kidney failure, arteriosclerosis, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The remote monitoring of medical parameters such as weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and peak air flow can be augmented by technology that monitors the patients' compliance with drug regimes, to ensure that they enjoy maximal quality of life with minimal disruptive impact. This paper describes the work done by IBM Research to implement a state-of-the-art, open, pervasive health-care solution. One of the most important aspects of such a solution is how it is implemented in a real-life project; in this paper we describe the implementation of a system to monitor weight and blood pressure for pediatric nephrology cases at Germany's leading university hospital, within the context of both dialysis and post-transplantation recovery.