PAL : Personal and Social Communication Services for Lifestyle Monitoring

英国国家医疗服务体系在为老龄化人口提供医疗服务方面面临越来越大的压力。与此同时，人们越来越熟悉和接受各种各样的技术。现在正是开发技术辅助的生活方式监测的时候，特别是对那些患有慢性病的人。PAL项目利用创新的传感器和通信技术，通过安全的、基于事件的中间件提供用户友好的、策略控制的监控。研究问题包括：数据采集和信息推导。我们将记录和处理与一个人的生活方式有关的信息；这必须以一种不具侵入性或不过分繁重的方式进行。可以被感知的信息有：心电图、心率、血糖水平、运动、饮食相关数据、GPS等。传感可以通过与用户直接接触或来自环境。处理可能涉及多个数据源，并且可以从用户远程完成。通过将来自多个传感器的数据与其他用户活动数据相关联，将获得进一步的知识。这将使我们能够确定行为模式，检测紧急情况（注意，对一个人来说不寻常的情况可能对另一个人来说是正常的，因此决策必须针对个人），并向用户提供解释（和更好的支持）。数据可以从白天使用的各种计算平台收集，如个人电脑、笔记本电脑、移动电话等，并可以深入了解是什么触发了某些用户行为，例如与压力有关的行为。通信：上述服务要求将数据可靠和安全地交付给适当的目的地和主体，例如家庭中心、医院、医生的手术室或用户本身。这些信息可以是记录数据、实时测量，甚至是一个事件信号，表明这个人需要紧急医疗援助。无论哪种方式，信息在通过网络传输时都不应该被损坏、丢失或非法查看。当用户在家中走动、在室外行走或使用交通工具或进入其他建筑物时，底层网络应支持持续监测。信息治理将考虑收集和处理个人数据的法律和道德框架。我们将在自动执行的政策中体现这些隐私要求和有关人员的授权。审计是这种制度的一个重要组成部分，解决了所涉及的负责人的责任。收集到的一些信息应记录在患者的电子健康记录中，以便在需要治疗时可用。用户、护理人员和技术人员有安全、响应和尊重隐私的义务，这些义务必须明确并根据审计进行检查。在设计阶段和测试开发的解决方案时，让真正的用户参与进来是很重要的。因此，任何有关功能或接口的问题都将尽早确定。我们的目标是为日常使用构建易于理解和操作的解决方案，需要最少的配置并采用适当的交互范例。由于大多数信息都是私有的，用户必须适当地参与其中，并被告知所感知的内容及其原因。他们必须控制自己的信息。总而言之，我们将使用户能够监测他们的健康状况，并在适当的时候将这种监测与专业医疗保健服务集成在一起。为了实现这一目标，我们将在整个系统架构中利用最先进的传感器和通信技术。法律和NHS要求将表示为自动执行的政策。

The National Health Service is increasingly hard-pressed to provide care for an aging population. At the same time, people are becoming increasingly familiar with, and accepting of, a wide range of technologies. The time is right to develop technology-assisted lifestyle monitoring, particularly for those with chronic conditions. The PAL project exploits innovative sensor and communication technology, made available through secure, event-based middleware, to provide user-friendly, policy-controlled monitoring.Research issues include:Data acquisition and information derivation. We will record and process information related to a person's lifestyle; this must be done in a way that is not intrusive or unduly onerous. Examples of information that can be sensed are: ECG, heart-rate, glucose level, movement, diet-related data, GPS, etc. Sensing may be through direct contact with the user or from the environment. Processing may involve multiple data sources and may be done remotely from the user. Further knowledge will be derived by correlating data from multiple sensors and with other user activity data. This will enable us to determine behavioural patterns, detect emergency situations (note that unusual conditions for one person may be normal for another, so decisions must beperson-specific) and provide explanations (and better support) to the user. Data can be gathered from various computing platforms used during the day, such as PCs, laptops, mobile phones, etc. and can provide insight into what triggers certain user behaviours, e.g. stress-related.Communications: the above services require data to be reliably and securely delivered, only to the appropriate destination(s) and principals, such as a home hub, hospital, doctor's surgery or the users themselves. The information could be recorded data, real-time measurements or even an event signal to say that the person requires urgent medical assistance. Either way, the information should not be corrupted, lost or viewed illegally as it is transported across the network. The underlying networks should support continuous monitoring when users move about in their home, walk outside or use transport, or enter other buildings. Information governance will take into account the legal and ethical framework for gathering and processing personal data. We will embody these requirements for privacy, and authorisation by the person concerned, in automatically enforceable policy. Audit is an important part of such a system, addressing accountability of the principals involved. Some of the information gathered should be recorded in a patient's electronic health record, thus available when treatment becomes necessary. Users, carers and technical staff will have obligations relating to safety, responsiveness and respect for privacyand these must be specified and checked against audit. It is important to involve real users in the design phase as well as in testing the developed solutions. Thus, any concerns about the functionalities or interfaces will be identified as early as possible. Our goal is to build solutions for everyday use that are easy to understand and operate, require minimal configuration and employ appropriate interaction paradigms. As most of the information is private, users have to be properly involved and informed about what is sensed and why. They have to be in control of their information.In summary, we will enable users to monitor their wellbeing and health, integrating this monitoring with the professional healthcare services when appropriate. To achieve this, we will exploit the state-of-the art in sensor and communications technology within a whole-system architecture. Legal and NHS requirements will be expressed as automatically enforceable policy.