Context-enriched personal health monitoring

Since vital data measurements often represent only a snapshot in time, they have to be considered in relation to the daily physical constitution of the patient and the measurement circumstances like activities performed before or during measurements. Personal health telemonitoring actually provides no possibility for health professionals who have to interpret the recorded vital data to put them in relation with the context of the measurement and a patient’s daily activities. To tackle this contextual knowledge gap, a personal health monitoring approach is proposed, which allows the enrichment of measured vital data with contextual information from an Ambient Assisted Living home system. Therefore, it is possible to provide additional information, like the person’s activity before or during the vital data measurement. As shown in two use cases – cardiac rehabilitation and mobile nursing care – the presented approach supports patients and caregivers in monitoring health data and may improve their communication and therefore the caregiving process.