An efficient component-based framework for intelligent home-care system design with video and physiological monitoring machineries

This study proposes a customized and reusable component-based design framework based on the UML modeling process for intelligent home healthcare systems. All the proposed functional components are reusable, replaceable, and extensible for the system developers to implement customized home healthcare systems for different demands of patients and caregivers on healthcare monitoring aspects. The prototype design of the intelligent healthcare system based on these proposed components can provide the following features: 1). the system can monitor and record the videos of rehabilitation situations and actions of the patient by multiple CCD cameras, and the monitoring videos at different times can be accordingly stored in the archive. 2). the system can record the patient's physiological data records and the corresponding treatment plan, and these records can be stored in a XML archiving database for caregivers' review. 3). during the times for the patient to take medicine or other healing activities listed on the given treatment plan, the system can automatically alarm the patient and record the patient's treatment situations. 4). The patient's caregivers and family members can ubiquitously monitor the videos and physiological records of the patient's rehabilitation situations via the handheld mobile devices via the internet or wireless communication networks. 5). The caregivers and patients can setup the alarm machinery for the patients' physiological warning states, and once the patients' physiological states suddenly deteriorate, the module will immediately alarm the caregivers by sending notification messages to their remote mobile devices or web browsers.