Body Sensor Networks in Fetal Monitoring with NFC Enabled Android Devices

We focus on obstetrics and monitoring fetal health as an area of medicine that could benefit from body sensor network technology. We explore hardware sensor interface challenges involved with condensing the fetal monitoring procedure into a portable system for system integration with a smartphone. The contributions of our hardware interface with Android devices: i) using IOIO to prototype a universal interface to commercially available hospital grade devices, ii) using near field communication enabled Android devices for initiating monitoring applications and secure devices and hospital information systems. We demonstrate a prototype that interfaces medical monitoring devices and captures data without a cumbersome initialization processes. It reduces risk that applications can be accidentally initialized and corrupted unintentionally. As a result, the system can be used without a presence of a caregiver, and streamline in-patient monitoring process by improving service and efficiency.