Integration of RFID and sensors for remote healthcare

Healthcare represents one of the most promising sectors for future RFID applications. RFID, indeed, candidates as a natural solution to a large amount of biomedical problems, from care giving to telemedicine. Nevertheless, for a large scale diffusion into this market, the integration of RFID systems with a sensor network through the introduction of novel RFID tags integrated with sensors and capable to transmit the measured physical parameter, could be the turnpoint. Nevertheless, although some RFID tags capable to transmit sensor-like information are already on the market, only a restrict number of sensors, such as those for temperature or pressure measurement, can be easily miniaturized and embedded in the RFID chip. The integration of more complex sensors, such as those for the healthcare domain, is complicated and extremely expensive. In this paper, a cost-effective general-purpose multi-ID tag, called S-Tag, is proposed. It can be connected to generic sensors, and is capable to transmit a proper combination of ID codes depending on the actual value at its input. The S-Tag has been extensively validated by testing its performance when connected to different kinds of sensors. Moreover, the test case of the remote and automatic S-Tag-based monitoring of the glycemia levels of diabetic patients has been studied, demonstrating the effectiveness of the S-Tag even in realistic scenarios.