Networked Appliances for Home Healthcare and Lifestyle Management

Advances in technology and the increased use of home medical devices, will revolutionise the way public healthcare is administered. Homes and their associated networks in conjunction with such devices will take over many mundane healthcare tasks and manage new and enriched lifestyle choices that affect our overall quality of life. Through the combination of wireless and fixed networking infrastructures explicit links will form between the home and its devices and medical installations, such as hospitals. Through these interconnected networks new real-time healthcare management systems will emerge that continually provide information and react to adverse or unusual medical conditions received from occupants within the home. Achieving this will undoubtedly require a convergence between home networks and medical installations in order to harness the power afforded by both. We present a new approach using a working prototype to implement networked medical devices within the home capable of monitoring data received from an individual, which could then be accessed within the home and medical installations.