WSN for Healthcare

March 2009

ZigBee Wireless SensorApplications for Health,Wellness and Fitness

ZigBee Wireless Sensor Applications for Health, Wellness and Fitness - March 2009

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Foreword

Since its inception, the ZigBee Alliance has worked with a singular ocus: create a muchneeded global wireless language capable o giving “voices” to the myriad o everydaydevices which surround us as we go about our daily lives. This ocus has been aimed at thelittle devices, oten overlooked in an IT centric world, such as light switches, thermostats,electricity meters, remote controls as well as more complex sensor devices oundabundantly in the health care, commercial building and industrial automation sectors. Asa result, ZigBee Alliance members have created a wireless standard oering extraordinarycontrol, expandability, security, ease-o-use and the ability to use ZigBee technology in anycountry around the world. Today, organizations use ZigBee to eectively deliver solutions or a variety o areasincluding consumer electronic device control, energy management and eciency, homeand commercial building automation as well as industrial plant management. With thiscomprehensive set o attributes, the nonprot, open membership and volunteer drivenAlliance has become a thriving ecosystem o more than 300 members. As an ecosystem,the Alliance oers everything prospective product and service companies need to developZigBee products and services and benet rom the Alliance’s competitive and stable supplychain.

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ZigBee Wireless Sensor Applications for Health, Wellness and Fitness - March 2009

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Executive Summary

“The prospects o intervening to prevent deathin developing countries have never been better,”said Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland

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. However theseimproved prospects come with a price tag. Healthcare costs (both economic and human) are sharplyrising in all regions o the world, not only in thedeveloped world. Several infuential actors are welldocumented as causes o this phenomenon; moresophisticated treatments employing advancedand costly technologies, longer lie spans withresulting increases in elderly population, rising costsor energy, natural resources, and overall cost o living, increased living standards that can lead to anincrease o prosperity diseases like obesity, diabetesand cardiovascular diseases.ZigBee technology can be used today to beginachieving the vision o Dr. Brundtland. ZigBee is anAssistive Technology that can be used anywherein the world. It is designed with simplicity in mind,making it easy or people to use and allowing themto maintain their independence and mobility. It isalso extremely ecient in its use o power, and as aresult, capable o running on common batteries oryears.New Assistive Technologies in Health Care based onwidely accepted standards, like ZigBee, will play animportant role in slowing down the sharp increaseo health costs. Medical devices based on the ZigBeestandard acilitate the reduction o costs associatedwith the development and manuacturing o new medical devices. Standards oer enormouseconomy o scale benets or components, whileoering an unprecedented ability to simpliy thecontrol and monitoring o patients and unctions inhospitals, elderly care acilities and even homes. The ZigBee Alliance is an association o companiesworking together to enable reliable, cost-eective,low-power, wirelessly networked monitoring and

1 World Health Organization http://www.who.int/in-pr-2000/en/pr2000-78.html

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control products based on an open global standard.Promoter member companies include Ember,Freescale, Huawei, Itron, Landis+Gyr, Philips, ReliantEnergy, Samsung, Schneider Electric, Siemens,STMicroelectronics, Tendril and Texas Instruments. The goal o the ZigBee Alliance is to provide theconsumer with ultimate fexibility, mobility andease o use by building wireless intelligenceand capabilities into everyday devices. ZigBeetechnology is being embedded in a wide rangeo products and applications across medical,commercial, consumer, industrial and governmentmarkets worldwide. For the rst time, organizationshave a simple, reliable, low-cost and low-powerstandards-based wireless technology optimized orthe unique needs o remote monitoring and controlapplications.ZigBee will play an important role in the adoption o Assistive Technology by enabling wireless low-powercommunication between devices and servicesthat oster sae, healthy and independent livingconditions or the disabled or elderly. In additionto Assistive Technology, ZigBee applications in thehealth and tness domains can address several othermarket segments and needs. The ollowing analysisocuses on applications o ZigBee technology orchronic disease monitoring, personal wellnessmonitoring and personal tness monitoring.