A Middleware Platform for Integrating Devices and Developing Applications in E-Health

In the Internet of Things (IoT) vision, any physical or virtual object can be identified, addressable, controlled, and monitored via Internet. In the e-health scenario, these smart objects can be body sensors allowing the continuous monitoring of vital signs of patients. Due to the inherent heterogeneity of such devices, it is necessary to enable interoperability among them and to facilitate the development of applications that make use of the provided data. In this context, this paper introduces EcoHealth (Ecosystem of Health Care Devices), a middleware platform that integrates heterogeneous body sensors for enabling the remote monitoring of patients and improving medical diagnosis. In this paper, we present the EcoHealth architecture and a performance evaluation with an e-health application developed as proof of concept.