Using Incentives in Wireless Health Monitoring

With an increasing healthcare cost and a growing population of seniors and disabled worldwide, there is a need to provide quality healthcare services using limited financial and human resources. Health monitoring of patients using wireless LANs and cellular networks has begun in indoor and outdoor environments. Recently, health monitoring using ad hoc wireless networks, formed among devices when the coverage of infrastructure-oriented wireless networks is not available, has been proposed. Although innovative, such ad hoc networks primarily rely on the co-operation of devices and any lack of co-operation negatively affects the delivery of messages carrying patients’ vital signs. We discuss how reliable wireless health monitoring can be achieved using ad hoc networks, ways to obtain the cooperation of routing devices, and an incentive-based mechanism to improve wireless health monitoring. The design of protocols is also presented for decision making in incentive-driven environment.