Medical Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks: Who-Did-What - Application and Multidisciplinary Aspects of Wireless Sensor Networks - page 164

demand a completely new approach, a new concept of health management, which
is offered by wireless sensor networks.

8.3 WSN - The Most Powerful “Weapon” of Modern

Healthcare

A new concept of health management is the neccessary point which must be estab-
lished in the near future. The good aspects of sensor networks will be discussed in
the following paragraphs. Their potential of being the most powerful “weapon” of
modern healthcare, will be explained.
Precise planning and adequate design of sensor net may lead to the development
of a stable and functional system. Many advantages are discovered by putting sen-
sor nodes to work together and continuously collect data. Nodes sense vital param-
eters (body temperature, pulse, pressure, oxygenation levels) and do some basic
data processing. WSN also assumes that gathered information can be extracted
from the network itself and sent to more powerful machines. This opens new views
to the concept of healthcare.
Simple data sensing and processing is already one step forward, but data extrac-
tion enables us to track a patient's entire clinical history and to provide medical
staff with information of any kind. We can use data mining in order to discover
hidden facts about someone's condition. WSNs with attached data mining uncover
a number of possibilities, from theoretical as well as practical aspects. Knowledge
is power and in this case, power increases doctors' and nurses' efficiency and pre-
vents mistakes.
It is extremely important to cover a great number of medical scenarios.
WSNs give us the opportunity to face challenges. This technology offers a solu-
tion for four important healthcare patterns:

• Pre-hospital care

• In-hospital care

• Post-hospital care

• Continuous care

Now, each one of the mentioned patterns will be further discussed.
Pre-hospital care refers to situations of mass accidents or any other kinds of
emergency help situations, when physicians are faced with lack of time. For them,
it would be very useful to have an insight into the real state of injured people, and
sensor nets can provide this kind of control.
In-hospital care implies continuous monitoring of patients' vital parameters, and
appropriate data transfer to persons in charge.
Post-hospital care includes post-surgery parameter tracking, or any other situa-
tions where people face illness recovery.
Continuous care involves all three previous patterns, but also refers to smart
homes and elderly care.