Ambient Assisted Living has become a cost-effective option for coping with the rapid aging of society. Personalized health monitoring is an important aspect of Ambient Assisted Living, and it depends on the availability and use of appropriate medical devices. Medical virtual instruments provide a viable option for such devices. They refer to a hardware/software co-design of medical instruments that provides the dependability of hardware as well as the flexibility of software. In this paper, we discuss the concept of medical virtual instruments and their use as an effective option for Ambient Assisted Living. The discussion covers the enablers of this technology, the main challenges, and the hardware, software and connectivity options for such instruments.

The rising cost of healthcare and the increased senior population are some reasons for the growing adoption of the Personalized Health Monitoring (PHM) systems. Medical Virtual Instruments (MVIs) provide portable, flexible, and low-cost options for these systems. Our systematic literature search covered the Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and MEDLINE databases, resulting in 915 articles, and 25 of which were selected for inclusion after a detailed screening process that involved five stages. The review sought to understand the key aspects regarding the use of MVIs for PHM, and we identified the main disease domains, sensors, platforms, algorithms, and communication protocols for such systems. We also identified the key challenges affecting the level of integration of MVIs into the global healthcare framework. The review shows that MVIs provide a good opportunity for the development of low cost personalized health systems that meet the unique instrumentation requirements for a given medical domain.

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In this paper we present a novel algorithm that significantly improves the efficiency of wireless sensor networks, while providing a low and stable energy consumption profile irrespective of the number of nodes. We also present a modifiedmica Mote (m 2 -Mote) that uses a rectenna to produce dc-power from scavenged RF-energy for charging the node batteries. From our analysis and simulation of a 500node network with one sink node, we found that our approach results in 99% reduction in the amount of energy consumed with the addition of each new node to the sensor network when compared with LEACH. Similarly, it doubles the average lifespan of LEACH based networks and gives more than five times the average lifetime of networks based on direct communication.

In this article, we discuss how medical virtual instruments are used for ambient assisted living technologies. Ambient assisted living technologies enable seniors to age well in the comfort of their homes. Case studies are used to describe some ways that medical virtual instruments are being used to support ambient assisted living in the key disease domains of cardiovascular, neurologic, hormonal and musculoskeletal health. The article also discusses the open research issues and future perspectives relating to the use of medical virtual instruments in these domains.