Date of Graduation

5-2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Degree Level

Undergraduate

Department

Computer Science and Computer Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Thompson, Craig W.

Committee Member/Reader

Deaton, Russell J.

Committee Member/Second Reader

Milburn, Ashlea B.

Abstract

Many patients with chronic health problems have multiple ailments but different patients may have different such ailments. Home monitoring systems for individual ailments exist but a patient may have multiple of these, all designed independently. There are no standard architectures so this leads to unmanageable diversity which causes problems for patients in having to learn to use a variety of monitors and for physicians in trying to monitor many patients. The purpose of this project was to design and prototype a next generation modular remote healthcare monitoring system capable of monitoring multiple ailments and extensible to new ailments in order to explore and evaluate the feasibility of such a one-size-fits-all system and assess a practical way to implement it. The project was designed and programmed as if it were to be deployed in a real world situation using real monitors and a smart phone based monitoring scheme and was also implemented and tested in part using a 3D virtual world, Second Life. Using this virtual world platform provided freedom in exploring some of the alternative designs. Implementing such a system using real world devices and not simply designing it conceptually gave a better view of the future of home health monitoring as well as a better framework for developing a future family of remote monitoring systems. The system was evaluated and was determined to provide a reasonable proof of concept patient monitoring architecture that could potentially influence a next generation of modular home healthcare monitoring systems.

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