Follow-Us : uma plataforma de Ubiquitous Healthcare

Abstract

This dissertation proposes the development of an Ubiquitous Healthcare environment, a well known word denoting health care using the technology concepts involved with invisible computer engineering. As a study of case and concept proof an application of monitoring was developed considering the home instrumentation with wireless sensor networks technology, the clothes manufacturing with wearable computing technology, as well as application of concepts of Social Sensing and Internet of Things. The proposed environment organizes the collected data flow from different types of sensors and networks, establishes a processing routine according to application objectives and provides commands that allow forward the information to be used as control parameters of the environment itself or used by external agents. A several wireless devices with the ability of sensing, processing and communication are embedded in clothing, artifacts, furniture, appliances and buildings allowing instrument and control the environment by facilitating the care with older people living alone. This architecture, called Follow-Us, establishes different types of services that can be performed. Simulations were performed in order to evaluate the proposed solution and to assist in selecting parameters and platforms to be used in the development of a real system. As a concept proof, some prototypes were developed using free hardware, as well as the Arduino LilyPad platform, others prototypes using MicaZ sensor nodes and accelerometers in Android smartphones.