Prioritization of Patient Vital Signs Transmission Using Wireless Body Area Networks - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 259

Chapter 13

Prioritization of Patient Vital
Signs Transmission Using
Wireless Body Area Networks

Baozhi Chen
Rutgers University, USA

Dario Pompili
Rutgers University, USA

ABSTRACT

Triage is the process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition when resources are
insufficient. Hospitals today are equipped with more and more electronic medical devices. This results
in possibly high level of electromagnetic interference that may lead to the failure of medical monitoring
devices. Moreover, a patient is usually moved between different hospital settings during triage. Accurate
and quick prioritization of patient vital signs in such environments is crucial for making efficient and
real-time decisions. In this chapter, a novel in-network solution to prioritize the transmission of patient
vital signs using wireless body area networks is proposed; the solution relies on a distributed priority
scheduling strategy based on the current patient condition and on the vital sign end-to-end delay/reli-
ability requirement. The proposed solution was implemented in TinyOS, and its performance was tested
in a real scenario.

INTRODUCTION

in memory, energy, computation, and communica-
tion capabilities, are strategically deployed on a
patient, forming a cluster that is called Wireless
Body Area Network (WBAN) (Norgall, Schmidt,
& von der Grun, 2004). Many works based on
WBANs have been proposed that focus on de-
signing wireless sensors for a single vital sign

The rapid growth of wireless technologies and
personal area networks enables the continuous
healthcare monitoring of mobile patients using
compact sensors that collect and evaluate body
parameters and movements. These sensors, limited