Dubai, October 21, 2012: Researchers from the Canadian University Dubai will be part of an international team developing new techniques in wireless biotechnology for mobile healthcare applications.
Dr Adel Mnaouer, from the Canadian University Dubai's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is part of a team - also including researchers from universities from Malaysia, Qatar and Oman - that successfully bid for $1million to undertake the work.
The grant, funded by the Qatar National Research Foundation, will support research into patient well-being, including how new advances in sensor and 4G wireless technology can be used to remotely monitor patients. The team intends to design and implement lightweight, low-power, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) so that warning signals, triggered by sensors attached to the body, can be transmitted via a wide-area network to alert medical staff of an impending emergency, and provide remote patient monitoring through a web gateway.
The system could be used to monitor such things as as blood sugar levels or hear rate. Dr Mnaouer will be looking directly at the software used to create an out-of-the-box prototype - including the protocols used for the different piece to communicate, and the context-aware web gateway for real time monitoring by medical staff. One key objectives of the research is to make sure the wireless signals emitted are completely safe to the patient - something that is always a concern with WBAN technology.
Dr Adel commented: "With the extensive implementation of 4G and smartphone technology across the region we want to design a safe and productive piece of technology that could potentially save thousands of lives, while also saving medical staff a lot of valuable time."
The research proposal, Wireless Biotelemetry for Ubiquitous Healthcare Application, aligns with the 6th Joint IFIP Conference on Wireless and Mobile Networking being held at the Canadian University Dubai in April 2013. The event hosts large discussions for researchers, practitioners and students interested in new developments of mobile and wireless technology, with over 400 participants scheduled to attend.
Dr Adel continued: "It is an amazing opportunity for myself, my colleagues and the Canadian University Dubai to be a part of this major medical research. It's fantastic to see our hard work recognized, especially on an international level. However, this is only the beginning and we have a long but exciting journey ahead of us."
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