Ecosystem-driven design of in-home terminals based on open platform for the Internet-of-Things

In-home healthcare services based on the Internet-of-Things (IoT) have great business potentials. To turn it into reality, a business ecosystem should be established first. Technical solutions should therefore aim for a cooperative ecosystem by meeting the interoperability, security, and system integration requirements. In this paper, we propose an ecosystem-driven design strategy and apply it in the design of an open-platform-based in-home healthcare terminal. A cooperative business ecosystem is formulated by merging the traditional healthcare and mobile internet ecosystems. To support the ecosystem in practical technology and business development, ecosystem-driven standardization efforts, security mechanisms, terminal design principles, and data handling schemes are analyzed and corresponding solutions or guidelines are presented. Thirdly, to verify the proposed design strategy and guidelines, an open-platform-based terminal is implemented and demonstrated by a prototyping system.