On-site Evaluation of Rehabilitation Patients Monitoring System Using Distributed Wireless Gateways

This paper presents a hands-free monitoring system for rehabilitation patients that uses wireless gateways to fully cover the floor of an inpatient ward. For stroke rehabilitation, 24-hour monitoring is recommended. Low-power wireless such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is suitable for this purpose because of its long battery life. However, most systems require smartphones or tablet computers to acquire patient data due to BLE's short communication range. Instead of using smartphones, we installed around fifty BLE gateways to implement a hands-free data acquisition system. The system was evaluated both quantitatively and qualitatively. The data acquisition rate of the system was found to be over 90% through 24-hour patient monitoring, which is almost the same as that for systems using smartphones. Questionnaires about usability administered to both medical staff and patients suggested that they felt the smartphone-less system was more comfortable than the smartphone system. These results suggest the possibility of using such a distributed data acquisition system in real medical wards and its benefits.