Ambient-aware continuous care through semantic context dissemination.

Background: The ultimate ambient-intelligent care room contains numerous sensors and devices to monitor the patient, sense and adjust the environment and support the staff. This sensor-based approach results in a large amount of data, which can be processed by current and future applications, e.g.

Distributed, signal strength-based indoor localization algorithm for use in healthcare environments.

In current healthcare environments, a trend toward mobile and personalized interactions between people and nurse call systems is strongly noticeable. Therefore, it should be possible to locate patients at all times and in all places throughout the care facility. This paper aims at describing a method by which a mobile node can locate itself indoors, based on signal strength measurements and a minimal amount of yes/no decisions.

Probabilistic priority assessment of nurse calls.

Current nurse call systems are very static. Call buttons are fixed to the wall, and systems do not account for various factors specific to a situation. We have developed a software platform, the ontology-based Nurse Call System (oNCS), which supports the transition to mobile and wireless nurse call buttons and uses an intelligent algorithm to address nurse calls.

A self-learning nurse call system.

The complexity of continuous care settings has increased due to an ageing population, a dwindling number of caregivers and increasing costs. Electronic healthcare (eHealth) solutions are often introduced to deal with these issues. This technological equipment further increases the complexity of healthcare as the caregivers are responsible for integrating and configuring these solutions to their needs.

An ontology-based nurse call management system (oNCS) with probabilistic priority assessment.

Background: The current, place-oriented nurse call systems are very static. A patient can only make calls with a button which is fixed to a wall of a room. Moreover, the system does not take into account various factors specific to a situation.