Wearable Internet of Things: Concept, architectural components and promises for person-centered healthcare

The proliferation of mobile devices, ubiquitous internet, and cloud computing has sparked a new era of Internet of Things (IoT), thus allowing researchers to create application-specific solutions based on the interconnection between physical objects and the internet. Recently, wearable devices are rapidly emerging and forming a new segment-“Wearable IoT (WIoT)” due to their capability of sensing, computing and communication. Future generations of WIoT promise to transform the healthcare sector, wherein individuals are seamlessly tracked by wearable sensors for personalized health and wellness information-body vital parameters, physical activity, behaviors, and other critical parameters impacting quality of daily life. This paper presents an effort to conceptualize WIoT in terms of their design, function, and applications. We discuss the building blocks of WIoT-including wearable sensors, internet-connected gateways and cloud and big data support-that are key to its future success in healthcare domain applications. We also present a new system science for WIoT that suggests future directions, encompassing operational and clinical aspects.

I. Introduction

The rising cost of healthcare, the increase in elderly population, and the prevalence of chronic diseases around the world urgently demand the transformation of healthcare from a hospital-centered system to a person-centered environment, with a focus on citizens' disease management as well as their wellbeing. The development of personal mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets is helping establish a model of mobile health (mHealth) that can facilitate a continuum of person-centered care by relying on these mobile devices as a medium of sensing, interaction, and communication. Although, smartphones are embedded with an array of sensors that can track a user's motion, location, activity, and so forth, these devices still lack the capability to collect fine-grain information of a user's bodily health. A wide array of wearable devices has recently been developed to extend the capabilities of mobile devices, especially in the area of body and behavior sensing.