Cloud-Based Smart Home Environment (CoSHE) for home healthcare
The continued increase of senior population worldwide is causing challenges to existing healthcare and support systems in terms of infrastructure and trained professionals. Recently, smart home environments are being utilized for ubiquitous health monitoring, allowing patients to stay at the comfort of their homes. In this paper we presented a Cloud-Based Smart Home Environment (CoSHE) for home healthcare. Our system collects physiological signals through non-invasive wearable sensors and provides contextual information in terms of daily activities and location in the home. The body fluid intake level is also provided. This enables healthcare professionals to study daily activities, behavioral changes and monitor rehabilitation and recovery processes. A smart home environment is set up with ambient sensors to provide contextual information. The sensor data is processed on a smart home gateway and is sent to a private cloud server. The cloud infrastructure is developed to provide real time data access for remote care givers. Our case study shows that we can successfully integrate contextual information to health data and this comprehensive information can help understand caretaker's health status.