A Novel Approach of Sensors-Based Wearable Systems for Monitoring of Human Movement and Falls

The aim of this paper is to summarize recent developments in the field of wearable sensors and systems that are relevant to the field of rehabilitation. The growing body of work focused on the application of wearable technology to monitor older adults and subjects with chronic conditions in the home and community settings justifies the emphasis of this review paper on summarizing clinical applications of wearable technology currently undergoing assessment rather than describing the development of new wearable sensors and systems. The advancement in the field of wireless technology in recent years has led to a wide variety of applications. Wireless sensor networks have been an active research topic for around a decade now. Moving from early research in military applications, these are now widely deployed in diverse applications including the health monitoring system. Body area sensor network is one of those advanced applications which assist in monitoring of bio medical parameters of a person wearing it. The main purpose of this is to make it possible for a patient needing permanent monitoring yet to be fully mobile. This paper deals with most of the biomedical parameters of a patient like heartbeats, body temperature, glucose levels, respiratory conditions and so on. Body area sensor network basically consists of a set of light weighted sensors which monitor the various health parameters. All these monitored bio-signals are sent to a back-end system at a healthcare centre with the help of radio frequency signals. A healthcare specialist retrieves this data over a reliable wired connection. To increase the freedom of movement of the patient, technologies like Bluetooth and general packet radio switching have been utilized. Global positioning system is used here to track the specific location of a patient. This location provision service makes it possible to locate patients even while they are outside the healthcare centre. This system is cost effective and the results indicate that the system has a very good response time.