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An internet of things–based personal device for diabetes therapy management in ambient assisted living (AAL)

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Abstract

Diabetes therapy management in AAL environments, such as old people and diabetes patients homes, is a very difficult task since many factors affect a patient’s blood sugar levels. Factors such as illness, treatments, physical and psychological stress, physical activity, drugs, intravenous fluids and change in the meal plan cause unpredictable and potentially dangerous fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Right now, operations related to dosage are based on insulin infusion protocol boards, which are provided by physicians to the patients. These boards are not considering very influential factors such as glycemic index from the diet, consequently patients need to estimate the dosage leading to dose error, which culminates in hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia episode. Therefore, right insulin infusion calculation needs to be supported by the next generation of personal-care devices. For this reason, a personal device has been developed to assist and consider more factors in the insulin therapy dosage calculation. The proposed solution is based on Internet of things in order to, on the one hand, support a patient’s profile management architecture based on personal RFID cards and, on the other hand, provide global connectivity between the developed patient’s personal device based on 6LoWPAN, nurses/physicians desktop application to manage personal health cards, glycemic index information system, and patient’s web portal. This solution has been evaluated by a multidisciplinary group formed by patients, physicians, and nurses.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Spanish ministry for Industry, Tourism and infrastructure, and the ministry for education, social politic and sport for sponsoring the research activities under the grants AIRE (TSI-020302-2010-95) and FPU program (AP2009-3981). This work has been carried out by the Intelligent Systems group of the University of Murcia, awarded as an excellence researching group in frames of the Spanish “Plan de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Región de Murcia” from the “Fundación Séneca” (04552/GERM/06). Finally, thanks to the volunteers, who evaluated this solution, nurses, and physicians: Noemí Alcazar, Fermín Alcolea, José Javier Campuzano, and María Jesús Carrillo, and to the patients: José García and Belinda Herrero.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Communications Engineering Computer Science Faculty, University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Antonio J. Jara, Miguel A. Zamora & Antonio F. G. Skarmeta

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  1. Antonio J. Jara
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  2. Miguel A. Zamora
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  3. Antonio F. G. Skarmeta
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Correspondence to Antonio J. Jara.

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Jara, A.J., Zamora, M.A. & Skarmeta, A.F.G. An internet of things–based personal device for diabetes therapy management in ambient assisted living (AAL). Pers Ubiquit Comput 15, 431–440 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-010-0353-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-010-0353-1

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