I. INTRODUCTION
I
NFORMATION and communication technologies (ICT) are
used in telemonitoring applications to establish a virtual link
between patients and their caregivers to support timely delivery
of health-related data [1]. Utilization of ICT requires a barrierfree
design of the overall patient terminal. Usability and Plugand-Play
interoperability determines whether the patient is able
to accept the system and willing to use it in daily routine.
In the following section, the utilization of mobile phones and
wireless communication technologies as body and personal area
network (PAN) will be discussed to introduce an intuitive and
touch-based patient terminal.
A. Mobile Phone as an Application Hosting Device
The mobile phone evolved rapidly from a simple voice telephony
device to a multifunction consumer electronics device incorporating
personal information management functions, Web
browsing, entertainment, and other forms of personal computManuscript
received October 1, 2010; revised April 19, 2011 and October
13, 2011; accepted November 6, 2011. Date of publication November 18,
2011; date of current version February 3, 2012. This work was supported in
part by the Styrian government, Department 3, science and research (Forschung
Steiermark—Planung, Steuerung, Impulse—A3-22.E-4/2008-12).
The authors are with the Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, 8020
Graz, Austria (e-mail: juergen.morak@ait.ac.at; hannes.kumpusch@ait.ac.at;
dieter.hayn@ait.ac.at; Robert.modre@ait.ac.at; guenter.schreier@ait.ac.at).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TITB.2011.2176498