Emerging technologies and applications of wireless communication in healthcare

Future healthcare systems are anticipated to offer high quality services to patients with low costs through a variety of applications enabled by wireless and information technologies. This is because these wireless-equipped healthcare systems can remotely and continuously monitor the patients´ health status in both residential settings and outdoor settings, where patients feel more comfortable and their activities are less restricted. Early detection of patients´ emergency situations via wireless communications makes it possible to provide timely first-aid and access to patients´ health information in a pervasive manner, thereby improving both system reliability and efficiency. Although huge potential benefits are widely recognized, the application of wireless communication technologies in healthcare systems brings more challenging issues including energy-efficiency, quality-of-services (QoS), definition of healthcare policy, design of healthcare architectures, emergency detection and response, security and privacy, and legal issues.