SmartWalk BAN: Using Body Area Networks to Encourage Older Adults to Perform Physical Activity

Abstract

Due to the demographic ageing of the world’s population and the respective consequences, it is necessary to guarantee that older adults can be active and maintain their independence and autonomy for longer. The aim of the SmartWalk system is to promote walks in the city in order to stimulate physically active lifestyles. Body area networks are used to aggregate data collected by different type of sensors, which are transmitted to a server to support informed decisions of caregivers when planning physical activities for their care receivers. This article presents the SmartWalk system and reports an experimental setup that was developed to assess the performance of the current implementation and the respective critical components. According to the results, the SmartWalk system presents good performance in terms of battery usage, data upload, capacity to recover from connectivity failures and wireless coverage of its body area network.

The impact of medical cyber–physical systems on healthcare service delivery

“…Besides, the self-monitoring, diagnostic and self-correcting features of this sensing equipment make these devices highly accurate. To cite an instance, the use of remote health monitoring using Body Area Networks (BANs), in monitoring the physical activity of older adults under the supervision of their respective caregivers is found to be successful and safe (Bastos et al, 2021). The wireless system in the WBAN is also used effectively to obtain physiological data from sensor nodes and is transferred to remote stations with a multi-hopping technique using the medical gateway wireless boards (Fotouhi et al, 2020;Yuce, 2010).…”

Security Mechanisms of a Mobile Health Application for Promoting Physical Activity among Older Adults

“…An important component of the SmartWalk system is a mobile application, the SmartWalk app, which aims to encourage older adults to perform physical activity (i.e., walking in the city) while under the remote supervision of healthcare providers. The mobile application makes use of the sensors already presented in a typical smartphone and connects external sensors of a body area network (BAN) (whose implementation details were presented in [19,23]). In terms of communications, the architecture was designed to make use of the infrastructure provided by a smart city, so that the collected data can be easily transmitted without relevant communication costs.…”

“…It also allows for different fences to be combined using Boolean operators. Finally, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) was used to connect a BAN that includes a heart rate/pulse oximeter sensor that registers both the number of beats of the heart per minute and the level of oxygen saturation in a persons' blood [23].…”

“…For that purpose, SmartWalk provides a selection of routes for the users to walk on. During a walk, various types of data are collected by the users' smartphones and the sensors connected to them [23], which are stored and made available for consultation by healthcare providers to prepare personalized recommendations. Systems aiming to constantly monitor individuals' activities such as the SmartWalk have the potential of putting the privacy of their users at risk, since personal data are transferred through the internet [24].…”

Cross-Domain Classification of Physical Activity Intensity: An EDA-Based Approach Validated by Wrist-Measured Acceleration and Physiological Data

“…Although a healthcare operator is needed while performing the rehabilitation exercises, other activities like the so-called exergames, that can be remotely assessed, may promote the PA [5] and improve the perceived quality of life [6]. Moreover, other applications can employ PA coaching, in both hospital [7] and home-based interventions [8,9]. However, the intensity of the exerted physical workload is subjectively perceived from different individuals.…”