Proceedings of the Second Joint EMBSBMES Conference 2002 Houston, TX, USA October 23-26,

SCENARIOS FOR HEALTH MANAGEMENT IN FUTURE HOME

J. Parkka', E. Frumento2, K. Rentto', R. Suihkonen', 0. von Wench3, N.Saranummi'
'VTT Information Technology, Tampere, Finland 21nformation Technology for Medicine, CEFRIEL, Milan, Italy 'Tomorrow Internet AG, Hamburg, Germany
Abstract - The Future Home project has focused on specifying and implementing a wireless residential networking and gateway system. The main objective of the specified architecture is integration of heterogeneous wireless technologies, IPv6, and middleware for services. The project has studied many different smart home scenarios, and one central field of application is health and wellness management. In this paper, we provide a description of the future home technological concept and results from the user interviews about their opinions on different health related scenarios. Keywords telemedicine, home networking, smart home

I. INTRODUCTION

Telernedicine creates new possibilities to receive health care independent from time and place, giving the patient a choice to receive professional care, e.g., at home and leaving hospital beds for those who need them urgently. Current trend to complement the institutional care with home health 11. METHODOLOGY care and telemedicine is strengthened with the technological A. Services developments in the smart home sector. Several scenarios have been written to picture the services The aim of the Future Home project [l] is to specify and implement a wireless residential networking system. The and applications the Future Home project will implement on plan is to develop a networking platform that can cope with top of the system. In this paper we discuss the health related different wireless networking technologies like Bluetooth, scenarios. The teleconsultation scenario describes a case in which a IEEE802.1lx, HiperIan2 and cellular systems. Once working simultaneously, this selection of networking technologies person with cardiologic problems 1 ) contacts the hospital would satisfy the networking needs of wide variety of with his TV and videoconferencing equipment. He 2) services ranging from low-bit rate needs of white goods to measures the ECG during the videoconference and transfers the data to the cardiologist for further analysis. The high-bit rate needs of entertainment devices. The Future Home platform is designed to make use of cardiologist notices that the person has minor problems and IPv6. With IPv6 the address space increases to 128 bits, sends a doctor to visit him. The fitness and health which allows mobile terminals, home appliances and sensors management scenario describes a case where a person who is to have fixed IP addresses and therefore stay always online. interested in monitoring and managing his health at home is The protocol will also improve security of the Internet, since provided with new services. 3) The person's activity is data encryption and user authentication are built-in features measured using a wrist unit in order to find out changes in of IPv6. The autoconfiguration feature of IPv6 guarantees his health status. 4) The person uses a fitness device to automatic configuration of the network settings between interact with a computer game. Time and heart rate during a devices and the network, This is important in home certain task are stored and compared to previous week's environment, when a new home appliance is to become part results in order to see the changes in health status. 5) The of the residential network. The installation should happen person weighs himself each morning, the result is stored automatically, without user interaction. IPv6 also has locally and long-term trends can be viewed with information features that contribute to faster network traffic. Quality of and tips on weight management on the TV screen. service (QoS) allows the sender to follow the reception of the packets and to lower the stream quality (e.g., video B. Interviews Alltogether 14 interviews were camed out to find out user resolution) when slow data transfer is detected. Multicasting attitudes towards the Future Home scenarios. Eight of the allows many clients to share the same stream, meaning less load on the network. Mobility support of IPv6 allows a interviews were camed out in Tampere, Finland and six in mobile terminal to stay connected to Internet while moving Hamburg, Germany. Alltogether 18 people took part in the interviews. In four of the interviews there were two from place to place. interviewees at the same time (couples living together). Twelwe of the interviewees were Finnish and six of them 0-7803-7612-9/02/$17.00 0 2002 IEEE 1904

In order to connect a home appliance on the residential network and create an always-accessible service on it, more than network hardware and protocol stack is needed. What is missing is a software framework that provides application connectivity. The main task of the software framework is to automatically locate devices and services as they appear on the network. The Java based Jini technology from Sun Microsystems and Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) from Microsoft offer such device/service discovery. Other tasks of the framework include administration of users, their permissions and preferences, keeping a logfile, etc. The Open Services Gateway Initiative (OSGi) standard specifies these basic services. The Future Home software framework will utilize Java and WWW technologies in the platform and aims to integrate several complementing technologies like OSGi, UPnP and HAW.

were German. Twelwe of the interviewees actively use computers in their work or on spare time, 6 do not use computers. The users gave their opinion on each of the 67 features of a smart home. The goal was to find out which scenarios and features gain most user acceptance. In the beginning of each interview, the interviewer first explained the goals of the Future Home project and the goals of the interview. The concept of smart home was exaplained with pictures, paper protos, a floorplan and a video clip to the interviewees. The interviewees had received the scenario texts some days before the interview and they were asked to study the scenarios before the interview. In the interview, the interviewer explained each scenario and then asked the interviewee if he would use such a feature. The answers were categorized into three groups: yes-maybe-no. Additionally, the users were asked to estimate, how much they would be ready to pay for such a smart home environment.
111. RESULTS

Table 1 Costs of the smart home features the interviewees were ready to pay.
IV. DISCUSSION The health care and health management related scenarios in general received very positive feedback from the interviewees. In fact, if the positive and neutral answers (yes and maybe) are summed, two of the health care related scenarios receive the most positive feedback (Figure 1). The message centre received the most positive feedback. It was often seen as a touch screen in the kitchen or hall or as a service in the mobile terminal. Connection to hospital using TV screen was seen very usefule. However, many interviewees mentioned it to be useful for someone else, like the elderly. Similarly, the automatic ECG measurement and sending received positive feedback, but was seen most useful for the elderly. The comments of the virtual rowing race scenario were twofold, some of the interviewees said they would like to use it, some preferred going out and have their exercise outdoors. The weight monitoring was seen useful when reducing weight and for long-term monitoring, but most of these interviewees were not in need of such a service. Most of the interviewees didn't see the activity level monitoring useful, one of the interviewees said: "I wouldn't use it, I sure know when I'm awake." Remote wake-up call using the loudspeakers at home received mainly negative feedback. Many interviewees told they would rather go and wake up the daughter by themselves, without any devices. The price the interviewees were ready to pay for such a smart home system varied from 0 to 35 000 . Most of the interviewees estimated they would pay 1000 - 10 000 . These interviewees were thinking of installing the system to an existing apartment. Four of the interviewees were ready to pay 15 000 - 35 000 . They were thinking of building costs of a new house and estimated the costs of the smart home features as percentage of total building costs. One of the interviewees was ready to pay only 200 , but she expected to have monthly fees on top of that.
V. CONCLUSION

Figure 1 describes the user attitudes towards the health care related scenarios. For comparison, the most liked and least liked features were added to Figure 1. Home message centre refers to a messaging service that acts as calendar and as center point for family communication. Remote wake-up call using loudspeakers refers to a scenario where a person remotely wakes up her daughter using the home loudspeakers.
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Figure 1 User responses to question would you use this feature. Black = yes, striped = maybe, dotted = no.
Table 1 describes the costs the interviewees estimated they would be ready to pay for the smart home features. The couples have only one vote.

According to interview of 18 people, the health related features of a smart home are regarded as useful. The next step in the project is to select a set of services that will be implemented in latter phases of the project.

REFERENCES
[l] Future Home project on EU IST programme website www.cordis.lu/ist

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