Protocol Adapter: A Reusable Solution to Interoperability and Integration Issues in mHealth Data-collection Systems

摘要

Healthcare has been changing in the last years due to several inputs, the main ones being moving from assistive to preventive care and the introduction of patient-centric care models. In support to this tendency, the number of consumer mobile applications for remote healthcare delivery is rapidly increasing and the use of mobile medical sensor devices is also following. Standardization in the domain of data collection for mHealth is still moving its first steps and, as a consequence, those who aim at developing remote healthcare solutions must face significant problems related to the heterogeneity of sensor devices. In general, issues related to low interoperability and low code-reusability of data collection software in mHeatlh severely limit further developments in this sector. These issues have been addressed thanks to the Protocol Adapter which provides a single, uniform interface for both the collection of rich data and the management of medical devices. This article gives an overview of this component and its development process in order to provide a better understanding of its value when integrated in mHealth applications. After an introduction to the state of the art, the requirements for the data collection in mHealth systems are discussed. The design phase is then described along with the final architectural solution and the features of this free, open source implementation for Android are discussed. Finally, future works on the Protocol Adapter are discussed in the hope to attract the interest of device producers and of mHealth developers.