Context-aware process and user interface adaptation in eHealth applications : the LoCa approach

Mobile devices are becoming more and more popular in a largevariety of application domains. In particular, new sensor technologies,powerful mobile devices, and wearable computers in conjunction withwireless communication standards have opened new opportunities inproviding customized software solutions. This is particularly relevant ineHealth applications, from pervasive information access in hospitalenvironments to the individual support of patients, both in stationary andhome care.Medical professionals are equipped today with much more powerfulhardware and software than some years before. By making use of smartsensors and mobile devices for gathering, processing, and analyzing data,2 Nadine Fröhlich, Andreas Meier, Thorsten Möller et al.medical doctors and nursing staff are able to get access to relevantinformation (e.g., patient records) anytime and anywhere in a hospital.Similarly, for patients this technology can be used to provide supportwhich is tailored to their particular needs and impairments.All these environments are highly dynamic, due to the inherentmobility of users. Therefore, in order to best serve the individualinformation needs of the different users in eHealth applications, it is ofutmost importance to automatically adapt the underlying IT environmentto their context – which might change over time when user contextevolves. In a digital home environment, this requires the automaticcustomization of user interfaces and the context-aware adaptation ofmonitoring workflows for mobile patients. In a hospital environment,such dynamic adaptations will for instance help physicians toautomatically retrieve and present the data they need in their currentcontext, without having them to manually search for relevant information(e.g., on a ward round or in an emergency case).This chapter will give an overview on context-awareness in mobileenvironments with particular focus on eHealth applications and thespecial requirements of users in healthcare applications. It will introduceLoCa (a Location and Context-aware eHealth infrastructure), a concretesystem that provides a generic software infrastructure, able todynamically adapt user interfaces and service-based distributedapplications (workflows) to the actual context of a user (physician,caregiver, patient, etc.). Furthermore, the chapter will report on theevaluation of the LoCa system based on a prototype system running onsmart phones.