Selected design issues of the medical cyber-physical system for telemonitoring pregnancy at home

The telemonitoring problem of high-risk pregnancies at home is introduced, and some design issues of the monitoring system are identified. A Medical Cyber-Physical System (MCPS) approach has been taken. Various MCPS design issues and requirements, like: interaction of caregivers and a patient with the MCPS system, Plug-and-Play architecture, maintenance support for caregivers, interoperability of medical devices, medical workflows automation, dependability of the system, smart alerting, and intelligent acquisition of biosignals, have been addressed. The telecare system consists of the Body Area Network (BAN) of advanced sensors that are interconnected on a body of a pregnant woman, the Personal Area Network (PAN) that is responsible for embedded processing of physical signals, smart alerting, an intelligent human-machine-interface, and a reliable transmission channel to the Surveillance Centre located in a hospital or a local medical centre. The system integrates the new strategy for abdominal signal acquisition and analysis based on the smart selection of algorithms realized in the mobile instrumentation of PAN. Dependable telemedical systems, when broadly deployed, will provide a high societal value to high-risk pregnant women, especially those in dispersed rural areas. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.