ReMoteCare: Health Monitoring with Streaming Video

Governments the world over are worried about the increasing costs of providing healthcare to elderly and infirm persons whose numbers are growing rapidly. This paper describes ReMoteCare, a prototype we have developed for remote healthcare monitoring using a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) Pulse Oximeters, environmental sensors and streaming video to monitor patients. To illustrate the functionality of the prototype we describe three typical remote health monitoring scenarios set in an aged care facility. Finally a series of experimental scenarios were developed and implemented in a laboratory setting to evaluate the reactivity of the monitoring system to a series of physiological conditions that cause the streaming video to alert the observer to potential problems.