Health monitoring and healthcare provisioning at home (i.e., outside the hospital) have received increasingly attention as a possible and partial solution for addressing the problems of an aging population. There are still many technological issues that need to be solved before home healthcare systems can be really cost-effective and efficient. However, in this paper we will highlight another category of issues which we call architectural challenges. Each patient is unique, and each patient has a unique lifestyle, living environment and course of life. Therefore it should be possible to personalize the services provided by home healthcare systems according to the needs and preferences of each individual patient, and it should be possible to make incremental adaptations at later points in time if this is necessary due to, for example, a changing health condition. The architectural challenges and solution directions related to this has been discussed in this paper.
Healthcare provisioning in the home has been proposed as a cost-effective solution for the demographic changes in especially western countries that put increasing pressure on
the traditional healthcare systems [1]. In addition, higher living standards enabled people's concern for personal health and quality of life and generated interest for home-based solutions that support well-being, health monitoring and independent living. Arguments for home healthcare include economical benefits (by providing more efficient healthcare solutions and unburdening institutionalized healthcare) and social benefits (by facilitating and prolonging independent living). However, a medical motivation for promoting home healthcare is the ability to monitor patients continuously in their familiar environment, often in a non-intrusive way and without causing stress, as opposed to medical examinations in the hospital, which have to take place on appointment at a specific time and place. We are now witnessing many innovations in the area of home healthcare, thanks to recent technology advances in areas such as sensor technology, body area networks, wireless communication and information processing. This already enabled an array of applications, ranging from health monitoring, event-based alarm, automated analysis to communication of health-related information .
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