Patient-centered design method for self-powered and cost-optimized health monitors

Abstract

The emergence of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) with health monitoring capabilities has revolutionized health care. Implementing fully independent WBAN nodes is important to the long-term viability of this initiative. Regularly recharged and depletable batteries remain a significant impediment in such systems. Energy harvesting (EH) from environmentally clean sources has thus been receiving increasing attention. Nevertheless, the autonomy and optimization of existing WBAN sensor nodes have remained questionable because methods that integrate realistic usage conditions into the design process have been lacking. A plausible method is proposed to establish a framework for designing a sustainable health monitoring node in this work. A Health Monitoring Energy System (HeMeS) tool prototype is consequently developed using comprehensive analytical models and utilized to demonstrate system design space exploration for various patient types, incorporating environmental factors, electronic load activity levels, and system cost/size constraints. It is concluded that the patient-centered system design approach incorporating interactions across transducers, electronics, sensors, user environment and data duty-cycling profiles, is viable, and is in fact appealing in safeguarding truly autonomous and cost-optimal WBANs that are compatible with climate-neutral society.