A survey on wearable biosensor systems for health monitoring

Abstract

Wearable biosensor systems for health monitoring are an emerging trend and are expected to enable proactive personal health management and better treatment of various medical conditions. These systems, comprising various types of small physiological sensors, transmission modules and processing capabilities, promise to change the future of health care, by providing low-cost wearable unobtrusive solutions for continuous all-day and any-place health, mental and activity status monitoring. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on the research and development done so far on wearable biosensor systems for health-monitoring, by comparing a variety of current system implementations and approaches and identifying their technological shortcomings. A set of significant features, that best describe the functionality and the characteristics of wearable biosensor systems, has been selected to derive a thorough study. The aim of this survey is not to criticize, but to serve as a reference for current achievements and their maturity level and to provide direction for future research improvements.