A Software Framework for Remote Patient Monitoring by Using Multi-Agent Systems Support

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Software Engineering
• Internet of Things (IoT)

Background:

• Healthcare systems lag in adopting advancements in network, hardware, and software technologies.
• Opportunities exist to leverage technology for real-time patient monitoring and critical response.
• Addressing healthcare challenges requires innovative technological solutions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and develop innovative technological solutions for a proactive and reliable medical care environment.
• To construct IoT4Health, a flexible software framework for generating Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
• To enable autonomous Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) activities using multi-agent systems.

Main Methods:

• A framework methodology was employed to assess the potential for customized RPM applications.
• Developed three proof-of-concept applications with varied implementations to demonstrate framework flexibility.
• Conducted experiments with the Agents4Health application to measure monitoring task delays and responsiveness.

Main Results:

• IoT4Health, an extensible software framework, was developed as a contribution to eHealth solutions.
• Applications generated from the framework support identification, collection, storage, recovery, visualization, monitoring, anomaly detection, and reconfiguration.
• Real-time anomaly detection and instant notifications to health providers were achieved, enhancing proactive patient monitoring.

Conclusions:

• A generic, complex system approach offers cost-benefits over custom-made software for eHealth solutions.
• The IoT4Health framework enables timely generation of diverse applications within the healthcare domain.
• The developed framework supports a more proactive and responsive approach to patient monitoring.