Emerging Issues in Healthcare - Developing Biomedical Devices: Design, Innovation and Protection - page 9

Fig. 2.9 Human movement analysis through a system of wearable inertial sensors network:
example of data acquisition of the kinematics of anatomical districts and the corresponding
3-dimensional kinematic reconstruction (in the display of the figure)
Mobile Healthcare or mobile or m-Health is a term recently coined to identify medi-
cal services supported by movable type terminals such as mobile phones, smartphones,
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), tablets, or devices that rely on wireless commu-
nication. It also includes the use of biomedical devices for wireless remote monitor-
ing of certain physiological parameters of patients [ 1 ]. So m-Health includes reducing
the use of telecommunications and multimedia technologies integrated within increas-
ingly mobile and wireless systems to provide clinical services and health care. It may
be defined as the integration of “mobile computing”, biomedical sensors, and commu-
nication technology to provide new services for the health and well-being. It prom-
ises economic efficiency and improvement of the quality in the health system, with an
incredible number of possible services definitely looking further than simply beyond
the simple function of appointment call. Extension of mobile broadband and the prom-
ise of high-speed data transfer make the application of monitoring and remote diagnos-
tics in near future of value both for the institutions and for the citizen.
Indeed, the convergence of technologies into mobile devices for the develop-
ment of services in the most various sectors represents the platform also for many