An evaluation method of research on wearable wireless body area network in healthcare

Abstract

Wearable Wireless Body Area Networks (WWBANs) are an emergent technology enabling the gathering of real-time data, for instance, towards decision making by healthcare professionals in the case of remote monitoring of vital signs of patients. Recent research, however, does not describe in a straightforward way how hardware, software and wireless communication platforms fit together in order to fully support a WWBAN-based healthcare application. In this paper we propose a maturity analysis method of research on WWBANs in healthcare. The goal is to analyze whether a paper contemplates features that a research project on WWBAN in healthcare should have to apply it in a real world scenario. As a result of our method, features not addressed might indicate the lack of maturity of research papers, or even suggest open issues on that field.