Medical Informatics System with Wireless Sensor Network-enabled for Hospitals

The inventions and feature-improvements of smaller, more robust wireless, wearable vital sign sensors have made possible the deployment of such devices in a hospital environment setup to assist in managing patients' information. Emergency medical care, triage, and intensive care can all benefit from continuous vital sign monitoring, especially immediate notification of patient deterioration. Sensor data can be integrated into electronic patient care records and retrieved for later analysis. This paper describes the design of a medical informatics system that utilises the benefits of wireless sensor networks. Oracle® Healthcare Transaction Base (HTB) serves as the platform for integration, development and operation in a typical hospital medical informatics system. A workflow engine is proposed to interface between the wireless sensor networks and the HTB. This system will provide the flexibility and expandability to integrate sensor-nodes of different purposes, which are used to collect patient's vital data; such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, electrocardiograph (ECG), motion, and patient location.