An Agent-Based Architecture for Home Care Monitoring and Education of Chronic Patients

This paper illustrates an agent-based architecture for a telemedicine platform providing monitoring services to chronic patients and enabling remote home care. The architecture encompasses remote agents located by the patients and a central agent located at the treating site. Remote agents are mostly implemented on mobile devices in order to maximize their portability and be able to follow patients during their daily activities. Those agents exploit wireless connectivity both on the short range through the Bluetooth protocol for interacting with data acquisition devices, and on the long range through GPRS/UMTS for exchanging data with the treating site. The central agent besides keeping the clinical staff up to date with the patient state, may also autonomously send out notifications, alarms and reminders to remote agents.