Mobile Health Architecture Harnessing Wearable Devices for Monitoring and Assistance

Digital innovation in healthcare is embraced with a slower pace with respect to other industries inducing overdue considerations. First, there is a trend consisting of shifting from national healthcare assistance to the private health solutions, because they can integrate much needed technology faster increasing patients’ quality of care. In second instance, the actual care model working for the traditional health sector is outdated. Patients show a need to be active actors in their health. They want to be able to control, at least partly, what regards their wellbeing. The thesis here presented is the effort dedicated to the development of a mobile health architecture and its implementation guide, dedicated to improving the quality of life of patients suffering from chronic diseases. The aim of the thesis is to define a system where patients are supported in achieving a sustainable life for as long as possible, offering them a solution to gain some independence or even just reduce some of the stress they must cope with. The solution consists in harnessing wearable devices to monitor passively the condition’s major symptoms, and to actively use such devices for data input and assistance. The data collected with such devices is integrated, thanks to the back-end work of an integration platform into a CRM both patients and doctors can access, where together they can overlook all disclosed and collected patient health-related data. The thesis starts with introduction on healthcare wearable devices and the healthcare sector, before the brief presentation of a company I am indirectly working for, active in e-health innovative platforms focusing on Parkinson’s Disease patients. The thesis continues with the description of the mobile health architecture and of its implementation guide before the description of a case study applied to Parkinson’s Disease patients harnessing an Apple Watch Series 6, Heroku and Salesforce.