Remote Healthcare Monitoring and Assessment

Remote healthcare monitoring is the process of assessing the well-being of a patient when the patient and their healthcare professional are not located together. Advances in technology, specifically medical devices, sensors and high speed fixed and wireless communication networks have made it possible to bring the assessment process to the patient, as opposed to limiting the assessment to the constraints of hospitals and doctors’ surgeries. It is also possible for patients to benefit from expert consultants anywhere in the world and receive their advice, without a face-to-face meeting. We discuss these issues in the context of home based medication management and propose a technical solution using emerging technologies. This uses a base station acting as a reservoir of medication and a means to connect the patient to an Internet based care model. The following details of the system are presented; an Internet portal in the form of a web based interface to support the prescribing of medication; an interface for the pharmacist to support the filling of medication containers; a caregiver’s interface that provides a means to assess the patient’s adherence to their medication regimen.