Applications of eperspace Service Management Platform in Health Care

Transcription

1 Applications of eperspace Service Management Platform in Health Care Abstract K. Madani, M. Lohi, G. Terstyanszky University of Westminster, United Kingdom The eperspace project has created a distributed service management platform with wide ranging applications at home and globally anywhere else outside home. The project has created an open and trusted home platform where home devices can seamlessly work together providing personalised services, provisioning content adaptation, and managing a variety of services via a residential gateway. Using the personalisation information the system can recognise and form specific user communities towards which specific services such as health care can be directed. This paper presents the main concept and components of the eperspace Service Management and discusses its potential in health care applications. 1. Project Summary eperspace [1] is an EC-funded Integrated Project (IP) under European Framework 6 Program (FP6), consisting of a research consortium of 20 partners from telecom operators, broadcasters, manufacturers, academia & SMEs. The main objective of the eperspace project is to provide a networked audiovisual system with wide ranging applications at home and virtually anywhere, by enabling innovative value-added services. It is envisaged that the eperspace open architecture will increase the range of novel services and the speed of developing them, by re-using well-defined system components and their interfaces. 2. eperspace Architecture The eperspace business model is based on the Open Services Gateway initiative (OSGi) technology that resides on the Residential Gateway (RG) at home, and provides access to remote services from inside the Home Area Network (HAN). The eperspace distributed service management architecture [2-4] (Figure 1) has been designed as a hybrid system, in which there are a number of Global Service Managers (GSeM), interfacing with each other. Each individual Global Service Manager is controlled by a System Operator (SO), and interfaces with a large number of value-added Service Providers (SP). Each individual Global Service Manager also interfaces to & controls a large number of Local Service Managers (LSeM), which reside at user homes on the Residential Gateway.

2 Figure 1: The eperspace service management architecture The System Operator manages the user access to a variety of registered services by using the Global Service Manager. The operators have to sign agreements to regulate their cooperation with the service providers, including for accounting and billing. The users have to subscribe to at least one operator, in order to gain access to any available services in the network. The users access the Global Service Manager through a web interface. The user can access the Global Service Manager through the access and transport networks, as well as the devices community inside the HAN using the RG. 3. Service Provisioning Figure 2 shows the eperspace conceptual architecture for service provisioning. The user can be either at home or elsewhere as shown. Any service/content provider can offer their services via broadband connection to the Residential Gateway (RG). The RG acts as the single point of entry of all services entering the home area network. The Local Service Manager residing on the RG is based on OSGi standard and is installed on the residential gateway. The OSGi framework manages the OSGi system bundles. The local service management platform includes storage system for users data and local services bundles, and has components for local content adaptation and local personalisation. The LSeM connects the customers, who are in the Home Are Network to the outside world (i.e. to GSeMs, content and service providers, etc.). The LSeM is installed on the Residential Gateway, and closely collaborates at one hand with the OSGI framework and at the other hand with the Local Content Manager, the Local Profile Manager and the Local Service Continuity module.

3 Figure 2: the eperspace architecture for service provisioning The LSeM enables RG to manage and control community of devices at home using a device manager. Examples of grouping of the home devices to form a device community are: Computing devices: laptop, PC, PDA, etc. Communication devices: telephone, fax, intercom etc. Entertainment devices: TV, radio, DVD player, STB etc. White goods: fridge, washing machine, dish washer, etc. 4. Personalisation of Services in eperspace The Service Providers can personalise their services in eperspace as shown in Figure 3. Each service has a Service Profile that can be matched to individual user profiles, in order to provide personalised services which fits closely to the user requirements. Service Profile is an XML schema document which contains relevant service dependent information in order to use the service. The User Profile is defined by the user, but some parameters can be automatically selected base on historical data related to the user requirements which are stored locally at the user premises. The personalisation engine has a global and a local component residing on GSeM and LSeM respectively. Using the personalisation engine, the service providers can target a specific user or group of users to advertise their services. The users subscribe to services that closely meet their requirements. The service providers can further monitor user habits over time, to offer other personalised services as required.

4 5. Applications in Health Care Figure 3: Personalisation of services The eperspace Service Management platform provides the ideal infrastructure for health care applications. a) For health care at home the Residential Gateway can be regarded as the virtual caretaker. The Local Service manager residing in the Residential Gateway enables the management of all the patient s monitoring devices at home automatically or remotely by the Care Provider. The monitoring data is stored locally and remains secure and confidential. The data can be transmitted to a health care clinic or hospital under authorisation by the local manager. The system can also provide audio-visual sessions between the patient & the doctors or nurses as required. The health care professionals can develop specialised OSGi service bundles, which can then be downloaded onto the Residential Gateway. Using the local service manager at home, a variety of operations such as the monitoring of patients measurements, and administration of taking regular drugs can be performed remotely. b) In the case of patients being elsewhere (i.e. not at home), the seamless nature of eperspace services that are interoperable globally, allows the same operations to be performed as if the patient were at home. Using a wireless terminal, the patient is connected to the Residential Gateway at home & therefore will access the Local Service Manager, and all the local data. The health care services therefore follow the patient seamlessly wherever he/she goes. This extends the idea of health care at home to be then universally available for highly mobile patients who are using the eperspace Service Management platform.

5 c) From the Health Care provider s point of view, the system can use the unique personalisation features that exist in the eperspace system, to tailor & optimise the health care services according to the individual patient s requirements. The content adaptation feature adapts the audiovisual content so that many different devices can use and display this content at home or on the move. d) In addition, the system identifies and recognises various community of users, such as those with special needs or disease, allowing the health care professionals to target and advertise these communities for specific services, hence increasing the chance of selling their services to patients who really need them, and reducing the spam from those who don t. 6. Conclusions This paper described the eperspace service management platform, designed & implemented within an EC-funded Framework VI (FP6) research project. The platform has global & local service management components, and provides novel personalisation & content adaptation for generic services. By analysing profiles of both the users & the user devices, the system provides personalised service continuity and content adaptation on any user device, anywhere at home or elsewhere. In conclusion, the eperspace system provides an ideal platform for health care applications. This paper described some potential applications for health care at home and on the move. 7. References 1. eperspace: Towards the era of personal services at home and everywhere, EC FP6 Research Contract no.: FP eperspace Deliverable D6.2: Specification of EPS Services and EPS Service Management Architecture, EC FP6 Research Contract no.: FP , Sep K. Madani, eperspace Service Management Architecture, eperspace Workshop, Net-atHome 2004 Conference, Nice-France, 30 November Y. Zetuny, G. Kecskemeti, G. Terstyansky, K. Madani, Service Management Architecture in eperspace, Eurescom Summit 2005, Heidelberg Germany, 27 April Acknowledgement This document is based on the work carried out in the EU-sponsored collaborative research Integrated Project eperspace Nevertheless, only the authors are responsible for the views expressed here.