Exploring the Benefits of Using Motes to Monitor Health: An Acceptance Survey

Motes which are tiny, wireless sensor devices (Smart Dust) have the potential for transforming the biomedical and healthcare industry sector. Researchers consider motes as prototypes for nano-devices (built from off-the-shelf technology also known as commodity based hardware), which will become a reality in 10 years time. The bio-medical and healthcare market is among the fastest growing markets for WiFi and other Wireless LAN Technologies. Motes are being trialed for emergency triaging, patient profiling and monitoring and education. This paper reports on the findings of a second anonymous web survey of over 100 participants from Australia, Europe and North America, aimed at investigating the possible acceptance of Motes as a reliable and efficient health monitoring tool. An acceptance model, Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) has been applied to determine how viable this technology will be in medical institutions and patients’ homes. This paper reports specifically on the subjective comments made by the survey participants in an effort to measure the acceptance or non-acceptance of motes for monitoring health.