Life expectancy in most countries has been increasing continually over the several few decades thanks to significant improvements in medicine, public health, as well as personal and environmental hygiene. However, increased life expectancy combined with falling birth rates are expected to engender a large aging demographic in the near future that would impose significant burdens on the socio-economic structure of these countries. Therefore, it is essential to develop cost-effective, easy-to-use systems for the sake of elderly healthcare and well-being. Remote health monitoring, based on non-invasive and wearable sensors, actuators and modern communication and information technologies offers an efficient and cost-effective solution that allows the elderly to continue to live in their comfortable home environment instead of expensive healthcare facilities. These systems will also allow healthcare personnel to monitor important physiological signs of their patients in real time, assess health conditions and provide feedback from distant facilities. In this paper, we have presented and compared several low-cost and non-invasive health and activity monitoring systems that were reported in recent years. A survey on textile-based sensors that can potentially be used in wearable systems is also presented. Finally, compatibility of several communication technologies as well as future perspectives and research challenges in remote monitoring systems will be discussed.

Advancements in medical science and technology, medicine and public health coupled with increased consciousness about nutrition and environmental and personal hygiene have paved the way for the dramatic increase in life expectancy globally in the past several decades. However, increased life expectancy has given rise to an increasing aging population, thus jeopardizing the socio-economic structure of many countries in terms of costs associated with elderly healthcare and wellbeing. In order to cope with the growing need for elderly healthcare services, it is essential to develop affordable, unobtrusive and easy-to-use healthcare solutions. Smart homes, which incorporate environmental and wearable medical sensors, actuators, and modern communication and information technologies, can enable continuous and remote monitoring of elderly health and wellbeing at a low cost. Smart homes may allow the elderly to stay in their comfortable home environments instead of expensive and limited healthcare facilities. Healthcare personnel can also keep track of the overall health condition of the elderly in real-time and provide feedback and support from distant facilities. In this paper, we have presented a comprehensive review on the state-of-the-art research and development in smart home based remote healthcare technologies.

Over the past few decades, we have witnessed a dramatic rise in life expectancy owing to significant advances in medical science and technology, medicine as well as increased awareness about nutrition, education, and environmental and personal hygiene. Consequently, the elderly population in many countries are expected to rise rapidly in the coming years. A rapidly rising elderly demographics is expected to adversely affect the socioeconomic systems of many nations in terms of costs associated with their healthcare and wellbeing. In addition, diseases related to the cardiovascular system, eye, respiratory system, skin and mental health are widespread globally. However, most of these diseases can be avoided and/or properly managed through continuous monitoring. In order to enable continuous health monitoring as well as to serve growing healthcare needs; affordable, non-invasive and easy-to-use healthcare solutions are critical. The ever-increasing penetration of smartphones, coupled with embedded sensors and modern communication technologies, make it an attractive technology for enabling continuous and remote monitoring of an individual’s health and wellbeing with negligible additional costs. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research and developments in smartphone-sensor based healthcare technologies. A discussion on regulatory policies for medical devices and their implications in smartphone-based healthcare systems is presented. Finally, some future research perspectives and concerns regarding smartphone-based healthcare systems are described.

The world’s population is aging: the expansion of the older adult population with multiple physical and health issues is now a huge socio-economic concern worldwide. Among these issues, the loss of mobility among older adults due to musculoskeletal disorders is especially serious as it has severe social, mental and physical consequences. Human body joint monitoring and early diagnosis of these disorders will be a strong and effective solution to this problem. A smart joint monitoring system can identify and record important musculoskeletal-related parameters. Such devices can be utilized for continuous monitoring of joint movements during the normal daily activities of older adults and the healing process of joints (hips, knees or ankles) during the post-surgery period. A viable monitoring system can be developed by combining miniaturized, durable, low-cost and compact sensors with the advanced communication technologies and data processing techniques. In this study, we have presented and compared different joint monitoring methods and sensing technologies recently reported. A discussion on sensors’ data processing, interpretation, and analysis techniques is also presented. Finally, current research focus, as well as future prospects and development challenges in joint monitoring systems are discussed.

Electrocardiography (ECG) is the most common and extensively used vital sign monitoring method in modern healthcare systems. Different designs of ambulatory ECG systems were developed as alternatives to the commonly used 12-lead clinical ECG systems. These designs primarily focus on portability and user convenience, while maintaining signal integrity and lowering power consumption. Here, a wireless ECG monitoring system is developed using flexible and dry capacitive electrodes for long-term monitoring of cardiovascular health. Our capacitive-coupled dry electrodes can measure ECG signals over a textile-based interface material between the skin and electrodes. The electrodes are connected to a data acquisition system that receives the raw ECG signals from the electrodes and transmits the data using Bluetooth to a computer. A software application was developed to process, store, and display the ECG signal in real time. ECG measurements were obtained over different types of textile materials and in the presence of body movements. Our experimental results show that the performance of our ECG system is comparable to other reported ECG monitoring systems. In addition, to put this research into perspective, recent ambulatory ECG monitoring systems, ECG systems-on-chip, commercial ECG monitoring systems, and different state-of-the-art ECG systems are reviewed, compared, and critically discussed.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has caused a pandemic since early 2020. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has already caused more than three million deaths worldwide and affected people's physical and mental health. COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms are generally required to self-isolate and monitor for symptoms at least for 14 days in the case the disease turns towards severe complications. In this work, we overviewed the impact of COVID-19 on the patients' general health with a focus on their cardiovascular, respiratory and mental health, and investigated several existing patient monitoring systems. We addressed the limitations of these systems and proposed a wearable telehealth solution for monitoring a set of physiological parameters that are critical for COVID-19 patients such as body temperature, heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and cough. This physiological information can be further combined to potentially estimate the lung function using artificial intelligence (AI) and sensor fusion techniques. The prototype, which includes the hardware and a smartphone app, showed promising results with performance comparable to or better than similar commercial devices, thus potentially making the proposed system an ideal wearable solution for long-term monitoring of COVID-19 patients and other chronic diseases.