A RESTful web networking framework for vital sign monitoring

The burgeoning cost of healthcare has forced industry experts and academics to rethink current healthcare systems. There is a compelling argument that the increasing costs are primarily due to the fundamentally reactionary approach used in healthcare today, with the focus being on treatment and cure rather than on prevention. Consequently, building a sustainable healthcare system requires a paradigm shift towards a proactive prevention based approach. A critical requirement of such a system is the ubiquitous collection of and access to patient physiological data. Both real-time and historical analysis of this data is the basis of a preventive healthcare system. To this end, we are developing a pervasive real-time health monitoring framework to seamlessly connect both patients and healthy people to healthcare professionals. In this paper, we present the design of this framework, which is intended to be lightweight, agile and scalable. The design primarily utilizes a resource-oriented architecture (ROA) based RESTful HTTP to connect wireless biosensors, wireless networks and a cloud computing platform. The paper also discusses a proof-of-concept implementation of the framework that demonstrates the effectiveness of the technology choices made in achieving the required design goals.