Wireless Sensor Networks for Monitoring Physiological Signals of Multiple Patients

Recently, in many cases, the reason for a patient staying in the hospital is not that he or she actually needs active medical care. Often, the principal reason for a lengthy stay in the hospital is simply continual observation. Therefore, efforts have been made to avoid acute admissions and long lengths of stay in the hospital. In recent years, emergency admissions and long lengths of stay have become extremely costly. So the focus of health policy has shifted away from the provision of reactive, acute care toward preventive care outside the hospital. As models of care are redesigned, health economies are seeking to provide more care outside large acute centers. The drivers for this shift are two-fold; first, there is a quality-of-care issue and second, there is a resource allocation issue. Being cared for in a patient’s own home is a key aim of current U.K. government health policy and that is driven by an imperative to provide better quality care to people without the need to disrupt their lives. Investment in technologies that enable remote monitoring would lead to long-term gains in terms of hospital finances and patient care.