Patient-centred Healthcare Monitoring in an Outpatient Scenario

Aging demographic, intermittent treatment and increasing costs of care characterise the situation the Healthcare sector is facing. Further, the increase in access and use of more sophisticated, cheaper and wearable technologies, sets the opportunity for the development of novel Healthcare related solutions that can bring a positive and transformative change in the Healthcare landscape. This work presents the development of an alarm algorithm and respective monitoring strategy for an outpatient scenario employing wearable technology. The research methodology that was followed allowed to identify and determine the Vital Body Signs (VBSs) and thresholds characterising medical conditions and deviations from the normal physiological state. A survey conducted among Healthcare experts, provided the validation, with agreement rates over 71%, of the set of VBSs and respective thresholds to integrate in the alarm algorithm in order to enable the detection of both life-threatening and increased Health risk situations. The validation tests performed through the analysis of Health Data sets, enabled the design of the proposed model, and also to identify its limitations.