PAL : Personal and Social Communication Services for Lifestyle Monitoring

国民医疗服务体系在为老龄化人口提供护理方面面临着越来越大的压力。与此同时，人们正变得越来越熟悉和接受各种技术。现在是发展技术辅助的生活方式监测的时候了，特别是对于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、基于事件的中间件来提供用户友好的、受策略控制的监控。研究内容包括：数据采集和信息提取。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扰性或不适当繁琐的方式进行。可以感知的信息的例子有：心电、心率、血糖水平、运动、与饮食有关的数据、GPS等。感知可以通过与用户的直接接触或从环境中进行。处理可以涉及多个数据源，并且可以在远离用户的情况下进行。进一步的知识将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来获得。这将使我们能够确定行为模式，检测紧急情况(请注意，一个人的异常情况对另一个人来说可能是正常的，因此决策必须针对特定的人)，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PC、笔记本电脑、移动电话等，并可以洞察是什么触发了特定的用户行为，例如与压力有关的行为。通信：上述服务要求数据可靠、安全地传送到适当的目的地(S)和委托人，如家庭枢纽、医院、医生诊所或用户本人。这些信息可以是记录的数据、实时测量，甚至是表示此人需要紧急医疗援助的事件信号。无论哪种方式，信息在网络上传输时都不应该被破坏、丢失或非法查看。当用户在家中活动、外出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控。信息治理将考虑到收集和处理个人数据的法律和道德框架。我们将在可自动执行的政策中体现这些隐私要求以及相关人员的授权。审计是这一制度的重要组成部分，涉及到对所涉负责人的问责。收集的一些信息应该记录在患者的电子健康记录中，以便在需要治疗时使用。用户、照顾者和技术人员将有与安全、响应和尊重隐私有关的义务，这些义务必须具体说明并进行检查，以防止审计。重要的是让实际用户参与设计阶段以及测试开发的解决方案。因此，对功能或接口的任何担忧都将尽早确定。我们的目标是构建日常使用的解决方案，这些解决方案易于理解和操作，只需最少的配置，并采用适当的交互范例。由于大多数信息是私人的，用户必须适当地参与并被告知所感知的内容和原因。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福祉和健康，并在适当的时候将这种监测与专业医疗服务相结合。为了实现这一目标，我们将在整个系统架构中利用传感器和通信技术的最先进技术。法律和NHS的要求将表示为自动可执行的政策。

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 be person-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 privacy and 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.