International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications 
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 867639, 13 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/867639
Research Article

ERMHAN: A Context-Aware Service Platform to Support Continuous Care Networks for Home-Based Assistance

Federica Paganelli, Emilio Spinicci, and Dino Giuli

 National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications, Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, University of Firenze via S. Marta 3, 50139 Firenze, Italy
Received 28 September 2007; Revised 19 February 2008; Accepted 20 May 2008

Recommended by Frédérique Laforest

Abstract

Continuous care models for chronic diseases pose several technology-oriented challenges for home-based continuous care, where assistance services rely on a close collaboration among different stakeholders such as health operators, patient relatives, and social community members. Here we describe Emilia Romagna Mobile Health Assistance Network (ERMHAN) a multichannel context-aware service platform designed to support care networks in cooperating and sharing information with the goal of improving patient quality of life. In order to meet extensibility and flexibility requirements, this platform has been developed through ontology-based context-aware computing and a service oriented approach. We also provide some preliminary results of performance analysis and user survey activity.