Today’s mobile telecommunications infrastructure makes it possible to take medical monitoring technologies developed for space and military applications to the consumer market.

In fact, NASA demonstrated in 2004, a real-time remote arrhythmia monitoring system prototype to collect real-time electrocardiogram signals from a mobile or homebound patient, combine them with GPS location data, and to transmit this information to a remote station for display and monitoring. More recently, the University of Berkeley as part of the Information Technology for Assisted Living program, showed the use of Bluetooth sensors and camera phones to detect falls of elderly people.

Microsoft Research also presented several papers using wireless physiological sensors, including one for sleep apnea monitoring using a smartphone. Ericsson is taking the results of their research and transforming that into commercial services, in a similar approach to the eTen project HealthService24 is leveraging the results of the Mobihealth IST project.

The issue is no longer the technical feasibility but rather the commercialization and potential business models that will insure the success of wireless healthcare solutions in the marketplace.

The standards used are key for large scale deployment. For example, in the UK, the Imperial College is actively promoting their Body Area Network platform but it based on Zigbee and in my opinion having Bluetooth connectivity is a definite advantage particularly in view of recent developments. In May 2006, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group has decided to define a new profile, the Bluetooth Medical Devices Profile to address interoperability issues.

The fact that large players such as Intel, IBM, Motorola, Philips Electronics are joining forces to draft the specification of this new profile will undoubtedly accelerate the use of this technology in the health and fitness markets. The biomedical device field is changing rapidly as in June 2006, a new alliance called the Continua Alliance was formed with the mission of “fostering independence through establishing a system of interoperable personal telehealth solutions that empower people and organizations to better manage health and wellness.”

These developments reinforce the pertinence of the main objectives of the Saphire project.

Europe is leading the way in research pertaining to wireless telecommunications for healthcare and fitness but the fact that the market is so fragmented and policies are so different will probably mean that Japan, Korea or the United States will take the lead in marketing such solutions.

Samsung for example has a large program for healthcare called U-Health and will undoubtedly go to market with products and services ranging from sensors to expert systems. In terms of telecommunications and operators, it will be interesting to monitor the evolution of so called “convergence” to determine whether emphasis will be placed on mobile platforms or on access points (Triple or quadruple play).

Future research directions will probably deal with issues such as lower power consumption and power scavenging, which looks at ways to use some of the external energy (body movement, heat, light) to power the sensors and the radios.Research dealing with battery technology for mobile phones will be beneficial for wireless sensors as well.

I also think that there will be a greater emphasis placed on embedded signal processing (at the sensor level) and on shifting from hardware to software solutions to tackle the growing number of radio technologies (Bluetooth, WiFi, Zigbee, UWB, WiMAx etc…) used in sensor networks and mobile devices. For reasons of material stability, manufacturability and costs, I do not believe that “smart textiles” will be taking off. What users are looking for is low cost, ease of use and small sizes rather than integration into clothing.

Having worked for many years in the semiconductor industry, one thing I know for sure is that integration will allow dramatic reductions in size, power consumption and cost. What today might cost 250 Euros and be the size of the matchbox will be the size of a stamp and cost less than 50 Euros by 2009, and therefore will benefit a greater number of citizens.