Development of a generic monitoring application by the example of coronary artery disease

The demographic change, the social structure and the development of new and complex therapies for diseases are responsible for a permanent rise of health expenditure. To guarantee affordable health care, AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) is one possibility. Our objective is to show that it is possible to create remote support for caregivers by physicians even with widely available and versatile hardware. A single board computer currently only equipped with 6 different sensors to measure blood pressure, glucose level, pulse, oxygen saturation, temperature and ECG is used as a showcase for patients with e.g. coronary artery disease. We created a user-friendly local application that collects and stores all data and transmits them to a remote server as soon as an Internet connection becomes available. Additionally, a web-application gives access to remote physicians and nurses to support caregivers and patients. Patients keep the overview of their vital signs, caregivers, nurses and physician can be alerted on demand or check the patient's data anytime to give advice. We conclude, that projects like this are showcases for the usage of technology that can foster AAL due to the focus on widely available and cheap, versatile equipment.