Context-Aware Service Discovery for Mobile Medical Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
In short-range medical wireless network systems, existing service discovery protocols lead to communication and processing overhead due to unnecessary service information storage and display, causing clutter and potential medical errors by presenting irrelevant or unauthorized information to users.
Innovation Solution
A communication system with a visibility manager that limits information and services to context-relevant ones based on patient, clinician identity, and location, using a mobile device with a short-range interface for peer-to-peer communication and positioning, ensuring only relevant services are displayed and accessible.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If service discovery protocols store and display all service information automatically, then device connectivity and service availability are improved, but communication overhead and processing load increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by filtering service information based on the mobile device's specific location and context. Instead of processing all service announcements uniformly, the system selectively processes only those services relevant to the device's current context (location, patient association, clinician identification), thereby reducing communication overhead and processing load while maintaining service discovery capability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If all service information is stored in device repositories, then service availability is improved, but information clutter and processing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and removes irrelevant service information from the device repository before it is stored. By filtering service announcements based on location and context relevance, the system prevents unnecessary information from being stored, thereby reducing information clutter and processing time while maintaining availability of relevant services.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary filtering of service information before storage. By evaluating service relevance against location and context criteria in advance, the system prevents unnecessary information from entering the repository, thereby reducing future processing time and maintaining service availability for relevant services.
3Reliability
If service discovery is performed frequently, then service updates are captured, but communication overhead and processing load increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by performing service discovery and filtering operations specific to the mobile device's location and context. Instead of processing all service updates uniformly across the network, the system selectively processes only updates relevant to the device's current context, thereby maintaining service update accuracy while reducing processing overhead.
4Ease of operation
If all services are made visible to users, then service accessibility is improved, but user confusion and error risk increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system applies local quality by filtering services based on the mobile device's location and context, presenting only relevant services to the user. This contextual filtering reduces user confusion and error risk by eliminating irrelevant services from the visible list, while maintaining accessibility to actually useful services through the filtered view.
Data Source
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AI summary
A medical communication system (10) comprises peer devices (44, 46) which provide medical services which are used for patient monitoring, patient management or other medical procedures involving patients and/or clinicians. A mobile device (12) includes a short-range interface device (22) for discovering peer devices (44, 46) and associated peer devices services (66). A positioning component (14) determines a location of the mobile device (12). An identification component (60) reads a patient identification device (48) and a clinician identification device (50) and identifies a patient (32) and a clinician (30) at the location of the mobile device (12). A visibility manager (120) limits information and services available to the mobile device (12) to current context relevant information and services which are based at least on one of the identity of the patient (32), the identity of the clinician (30), and the identified mobile device location.