How WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network) can play a vital role in India’s healthcare sector?

An According to WHO(World Health Organization), Healthcare is the prevention treatment and management of illness and preservation of health through the services offered by health care organization and professionals. It includes all the goods and services designed to promote health, including “preventive and palliative intervention whether directed to an individual or to populations.There are a number of parameters which measure the health of the nations. Some of the indicators are:
1. Health Care Support
2. Doctor to Patient Ratio
3. Paramedical and Nursing support
4. MMR (Maternal Mortality rate)
5. Life Expectancy – IMR
6. Education GER
7. Safe Drinking Water
8. Cleanliness
9. Human Development Index
10. GDP or Per Capita Income
11. Health Care Access and utilization
12. Impact of Environment on health
13. Sanitation
14. Expenditure
15. Smart cities
16. IMR
17. Medical equipment’s
Comparing India’s healthcare with European countries where there are 63 hospital beds per 10,000, in India, there are 10 hospital beds per 10,000, 80 Doctors per lakh population. Six states which represent 31 of India population have 58% MBBS seats. Eight states which comprise 46% of India Population have 21% MBBS seats. This statistics shows
India’s healthcare system is in the big crisis and the biggest concern is the unavailability of doctors. Today we are completely surrounded by technology. For each and every day to day usage, we are completely relying on technology. Therefore, there is a need to incorporate technology into the healthcare system which at least enables patients to stay in touch with his doctors without visiting them. Regarding this matter, recent development and technology advancement in wireless communication is going on where low power Nano-technology sensors nodes are placed strategically in or around the human body to be used in several applications such as personal health monitoring. This exciting new area of research is called Wireless Body Area Network (WBANs) and leverages the
emerging IEEE 802.15.6 and IEEE 802.15.4 standards, specifically standardized for medical WBANs. The aim of WBANs is to simplify and improve speed, accuracy, and reliability of communication of sensors/actuators within, on and in the immediate proximity of human body. The current healthcare practices are going to adopt new technology based on Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) consisting of autonomous and smart portable sensor nodes with radio interface or radio common channels to monitor the patients physiological parameters such as blood pressure, ECG, EEG, blood
glucose level etc. and patients data are monitored through a feedback system via powerful computing devices such as PDA and smart cell phones. The small and intelligent biomedical sensors which can be implanted in the human body and data can be sent to a medical server where it can be processed, analyzed and stored. The earlier names of this
technology are tele-med, e-health or health. In fact, WBAN is the result of a merger of several technologies. A typical WBAN architecture includes (i) a small network around the body (about 1-2 meters), (ii) a gateway (sink) bridging to another network types that can be another node with some routing and data aggregate features, (iii) a wide network that can be an Internet or intranet network, and (iv) applications with GUI for medical or other healthcare personnel. To improve the health facilities for the people a tiny, automated, and intelligent medical
devices and technology namely wireless body area network (WBAN) evolved. The derivation of this technology is wireless WSN consist of sensors actuator, radio system and transmission system, which should be situated in, on, and around the human body to the measure, store and transmit patients’. Researchers from all around the world now have very enthusiastic interest to advance this technology especially on certain standardizations like its architecture, cost effectiveness, energy consumption or power efficiency, security and privacy (QoS) factors concerning WBAN technology still remain insignificant whereas QoS issues are also a major concern. WBAN needs the diverse functioning requirement vary from applications to the application which are very perceptive hence entail
more attention.