Quality of service support in wireless sensor networks for emergency healthcare services

The reliable and efficient operation of emergency healthcare (e-emergency) services poses quality demands to the systems and underlying communication infrastructures. In this context, most existing wireless body sensor networks fall short in meeting these demands as they only offer an unreliable service delivery. e-Emergency systems must provide quality of service (QoS) support so that a pervasive and trustable assistance is provided to patients under health risk. This paper discusses the need for QoS in wireless e-health and e-emergency services. To demonstrate this need, some current and relevant e-health projects with QoS requirements are presented. The study reveals the importance of providing QoS support in this emerging field of application and provides a summary characterizing the e-health proposals herein presented.