Safeguarding and Benefiting Geriatrics

Discuss about the Safeguarding and Benefiting Geriatrics.

Wireless body area networks are digital systems that provide effective and efficient communication solutions in health care provisions. It comprises of various applications including; portable audio or video systems, health monitoring, screening, telemedicine, military health care and interactive entertainment (E. Jovanov, and D. Raskovic, 2006). All these applications are critical in the continuous monitoring of the health conditions of a patient. Smart health care service providers apply wireless body area networks to effect quality and ensure delivery of smart medical care for the old people. There are many areas where wireless body area networks are applied and used successfully; some of them are; cancer detection which is a common one, epileptic seizure warning and even glucose monitoring in the patient’s body (H. Wu, 2007).

Healthcare Wireless network applications target particular emergence cases that are adversely affecting health of human beings, especially the elderly. Some of these targets are heart problems which are a common case, stress, asthma and cancer. The health sector is majorly thankful to the emergence of modern and technological medical systems which are aiming to improve healthcare delivery. There is a big improvement of healthcare provision when medical technology is integrated with specialized pervasive wireless networks. Many medical applications benefit a lot leading to reduction of cost on operations, reduced regular physical visits to the hospital by the elderly, easy acquisition of large amounts of data etc. This eases the work of researchers and assists them in concentrating more on finding best solutions for health care.

Some of the medical applications that are benefiting from wireless sensor networks include;

eWatch; the easiest device produced by the wireless network technology is the ewatch that is wearable on a patient’s wrist or ankle. It assists in sensing, notifying and computing the condition of an elderly patient. It is an easy monitor for the elderly and also notifies any nearby medics of a fall by the patient. The user is able to use the ewatch effectively and comfortably without any struggle by clicking on a query shown by the watch, if the user does not respond by the click of a button or clicking on the screen then the ewatch can notify the medics for help and quick response (Koch, S. and Hägglund, M., 2009)

Cancer detection and monitoring; Cancer is the second biggest cause of death in the world today. The elderly are the most victims that are affected by this deadly disease. Integration of medical technology and the wireless networks provides for smart nodes which are installed in the patient’s body to detect nitric oxide, the substance that is produced by cancer cells. This can assist the doctors in detecting and locating the body parts with the root-cancerous cells and therefore react fast to prevent it from killing the body immunity.

Asthma prevention; Till date, researchers are working and trying to find the best solution for the asthma problem. Millions of patients are affected by the asthma problem. A wireless sensor network provides for some sensor nodes that are installed in the body to help in sensing the allergic agents that are reactive to the patient’s body. Those nodes can then communicate the detection to the patient or physician for a quick attention so that the allergy cannot affect the body.

Glucose level monitoring; Diabetes is a big health problem when it affects a human body. The national health institute reports that almost 15.7 million people have been affected by diabetes since 1999 in the United States (National Coalition on Health Care, http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml). Diabetes is a killer disease that must be avoided at all costs; it is so dangerous that it yields other complex diseases such as high blood pressure, kidney disease, amputations, stroke and even heart diseases. Glucose levels in the body need to be monitored keenly and regularly and a biosensor implanted in a patient’s body can help in getting accurate and consistent information on the glucose levels of the body and therefore help in provision of accurate levels of insulin to fix the lapse or control the glucose level.

Medical accident prevention; An average of 98,000 human beings die from medical accidents caused by their own errors. Using a sensor network installed in the body can help in maintaining a log of previous medical accident cases which on detecting the near-happening of such accidents can help notify the medical practitioners to deal with it and avoid further damages.

Providing quality healthcare for every citizen of the country is always a challenge due to the concerning factors such as population, resource distribution, budgets and policies. The population is growing drastically and there is increase of the elderly which brings in a big concern for how best they can be taken care of medically. The elderly people often require regular health monitoring by the medics and this inevitably demands for standard information gathering, analysis and storing for applying later when performing tests and recommending diagnosis to the patients. The patient’s progress is also monitored along the treatment and this is how health informatics comes in (H. Wu, 2007).

The wireless sensor networks are autonomous devices that play the role of monitoring the patient’s body conditions and the environmental conditions he/she is at. They are useful in that they allow in-home assistance from the nurses and medics, something that any citizen would be much comfortable with than moving to the hospital. Also, they allow for smart nursing homes where the elderly people can be taken to be observed regularly. There is also the platform for easy clinical trials and research augmentation. (Hägglund, M., 2009)

Challenges faced in applying wireless body area networks on healthcare for the elderly ainclude: low power, security and interferences, robustness, continuous operations required, limited computation and regulatory requirements. These are just but a few of the challenges involved in healthcare informatics (S. K., & Weinmann, J. 2001, July).

Power challenge; Most of the wireless networks, which are obviously automated devices, require the battery for them to operate. The power challenge is inevitable in every appliance of wireless sensor networks. But there is also a bigger challenge posed by the smart sensor network that is implanted in a patient’s body. For example, a node that is on a fully activated-mode cannot operate for more than one month since a single alkaline battery only produces energy of approximately fifty watt-hours. This kind of challenge forces the medical practitioners in assistance with the technology developers to come up with better designs that have more effective scheduling algorithms and power management schemes (Weinmann, July).

Computation; The informatics devices as mentioned above are challenged by limited power, memory is also another challenge. Memory involves storing accurate data or information and before that there is computation. The wireless sensors do not have large computation power that can easily perform large bit computations; this can be due to the deficiency of enough memory for the function.  It is inevitable that communication is often vital but memory can be low and there might also be little power to do the computations. The solution for this challenge can be having different sensors that can be tasked with varying capabilities which acquire different data that send out one collaborative information.

Material constraints; this is another vital challenge for the wireless body network application in healthcare provision for the elderly. A biosensor that is being implanted in a human’s body has to have certain recommendations from a specialist medical practitioner. Normally before doing the implantation, the device’s size, shape, texture and materials used to make it are considered highly so that they are not harmless to the body. The chemical reactions of the device with the body tissues must be monitored with high level of keenness so as not to cause damage to the inner body tissues, there is also the factor of disposal of the biosensor after it completes its task. An example of such is a smart eye sensor designed to monitor and support the retina.

Regulatory requirements; this is also another challenge for application of the wireless body area networks. It is a policy in the health acts that any healthcare provision must abide with the requirements of the laws in the constitution. The regulatory requirements are there to ensure that no harm is caused on patients, there are normally testimonies that are signed to ascertain that the devices used do not bring harm to the human body. The healthcare act has it that when developing these devices, there must be safety designs as features or components of the device development. The regulatory requirements are there to prevent some of the immoral health researchers from conducting tests or trials with devices that pose danger to human body. Oversight of how the devices operate is critical.

Conclusion

The discussion above reflects on how the elderly people who have a variety of health conditions can be effectively and efficiently taken care of by use of wearable and implantable wireless body area networks that are integrated with modern medical technology to prevent and control health issues affecting the old. Such infrastructure is key in providing constant and ambulatory health monitoring which in turn improves the health of our elderly people. The technology offers a wide range of assistance to our society in aim of improving health care and realizing quality living by not only the elderly but also another human being suffering some health condition (Yasnoff, 2000). Wireless body area network assist majorly in data mining and gathering of important health information which researchers use in various health applications that provide viable healthcare solutions (U. Varshney, 2007).

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