Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
power consumption, especially for wireless sensor
devices has been mentioned in various researches
(Jimenez-Fernandez et al, 2006). Several solu-
tions are proposed including lowering battery
consumption by turning the device into sleep
mode when there is no communication (Yuce et
al, 2007), powering the sensors using energy from
the patients' bodies (Ho et al, 2009), “utilizing the
principle of inductive contactless energy transfer”
(Chen et al, 2009).
Ensuring security for patients' information
is a mandatory requirement for a CREHS in all
information processing phases involving infor-
mation transmission, processing, and storage.
A proper technical solution for this requirement
must completely fulfill legal requirements on pa-
tients' information security. Regulations defined
by governments worldwide impose compliance
guidelines on how providers should protect sensi-
tive data. This involves securing access to real-
time health status information, protecting data on
transmission from the wireless sensor to the base
station (located at the patient's home), and from the
base station to the server at the healthcare centre,
and data access classification and authorization
to the accumulated data on the patients' records
stored at the healthcare centre. Nowadays, the
common solution for this requirement involves
the use of role base access permissions and data
encryption via virtual private network (VPN)
tunnels through the Internet.
In addition to security, a CREHS need to pro-
vide good solutions for the interaction between
human with the system so that patients' privacy
is maintained appropriately. Currently, the health
sector relies on trust relationships to maintain pa-
tients' privacy but physically there is no measure
to ensure patients' privacy. This is because many
steps during the course of treatment require the
involvement of human manual jobs. A CREHS
will reduce a lot of human manual involvement,
especially in patient admission tasks and treatment
report printing and delivery. The implementation
of a CREHS will result in fundamental changes
in the way the healthcare services is administered
and delivered.
Usability is a compulsory requirement to gain
the user acceptant of an e-healthcare informa-
tion system. Although it usability does not affect
the application and functions of a systems, it
reflect the system's implementation feasibility.
This generally involves various factors such
as comfort of use, convenience (shape, color),
mobility, portability (size, weight), technology
compliance with common industrial standards, and
interoperability (Jimenez-Fernandez et al, 2006)
with many industrially standardized information
and communication systems. Some solutions
to improving the usability of such systems by
providing non-intrusive and easy to use sensor
equipment (Jimenez-Fernandez et al, 2006; Chen
et al, 2009) while others may look at the patients'
conformability aspects (Bouwstra, Chen, Feijs, &
Oetomo, 2009).
Finally, interoperability is critical requirement
which ensure the sustainability of a CREHS in a
long term basis. In the future when E-Healthcare
become popular, a standard infrastructure need
to be developed to help interlink and integrate
all E-Healthcare systems at the national basis.
The existing applications also need to be open
and scalable so that they can be fit into the future
infrastructure to be part of an integrated systems
and holistic e-healthcare system. Currently, the
national health information highway infrastructure
and rules to allow information to be seamlessly
accessed and shared across the Australian health
care system are under development. These will
have direct impact on the quality and final results of
a CREHS implementation. It is important that the
system architect for CREHS to have appropriate
solution to ensure the system can integrate well
with the national infrastructure for e-healthcare.
Non-Technical Requirements
Non-technical requirements refer to factors out-
side an e-healthcare system but critical for the
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