Device- and Analytics-Agnostic Infrastructure for Continuous Inpatient Monitoring: A Technical Note

The internet of healthcare things aims at connecting biosensors, clinical information systems and electronic health dossiers. The resulting data expands traditionally available diagnostics with digital biomarkers. In this technical note, we report the implementation and pilot operation of a device- and analytics-agnostic automated monitoring platform for in-house patients at hospitals. Any available sensor, as well as any analytics tool can be integrated if the application programming interface is made available. The platform consists of a network of Bluetooth gateways communicating via the hospital's secure Wi-Fi network, a server application (Device Hub) and associated databases. Already existing access points or low-cost hardware can be used to run the gateway software. The platform can be extended to a remote patient monitoring solution to close the gap between in-house treatments and follow-up patient monitoring.