A framework for physical health improvement using Wireless Sensor Networks and gaming

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is a recent technological advancement in Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS). It has a large number of applications in the health sector, for example, the telemonitoring of human psychophysical data, tracking and drug administration in hospitals. In this paper we present a novel framework using body area WSNs and gaming to improve a patient´s physical health. The proposed framework has three main components, the body area WSN, the game, and the data acquisition manager. Using the WSN on the patient´s body allows real time motion and medical data to be collected. This information is then filtered and used inside the gaming environment to control the patient´s avatar. This data also provides a level adjustment mechanism to change gaming parameters according to the medical status of the patient. Whilst the patient interacts within the gaming environment data is regularly collected from body sensor nodes and stored inside the data store. A neck physiotherapy case study is presented to illustrate the applicability of our approach.