ABSTRACT
Recent advances in wireless and embedded computing technologies have led to a radical transformation of healthcare. Wireless networks of low-power body sensors have been used to monitor the vital signs of postoperative patients outside of hospital facilities, for the daily care of elderly and chronically ill people, as well as to assist rehabilitation or to motivate people doing sports, allowing a significant reduction of healthcare expenses. Compared to these application areas, the number of applications of body sensor networks (BSNs) inside hospital structures and for scientific experimentation on patients has been, to date, rather limited, despite the potential improvements that they would offer in the management of hospitalized patients and in carrying out unobtrusive data collections for medical research. This chapter focuses specifically on the latter two application domains and carefully describes the technical and experimental challenges leading to such limited adoption. We give an overview of the most relevant applications that have been developed in the area and describe their noteworthy distinctive characteristics. We believe that this survey will serve as a reference to guide researchers and system designers working in these emerging areas.
