AUTOMATIC TRANSFER AND IDENTIFICATION OF MONITORED DATA WITH HIERARCHICAL KEY MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE

• US 20090264712A1
• Filed: 07/27/2007
• Published: 10/22/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/28/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Inventors: Garcia-Morchon, Oscar, Baldus, Heribert, Klabunde, Karin, Simons, David P. L.
• Granted Patent: US 10,709,331 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0002 Remote monitoring of patients using telemetry, e.g. transmission of vital signals via a communication network A61B5/07 takes precedence; transmission systems for measured values G08C; transmission H04B; transmission of digital information H04L; wireless communication networks H04W
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0028 Body tissue as transmission medium, i.e. transmission systems where the medium is the human body
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/117 Identification of persons methods or arrangements for recognising patterns, e.g. fingerprints, G06F18/00, G06V40/00; identification of persons by analysing their voice or speech G10L17/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 13/005 Transmission systems in which the medium consists of the human body
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/805 Lightweight hardware, e.g. radio-frequency identification [RFID] or sensor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/88 Medical equipments
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/064 Hierarchical key distribution, e.g. by multi-tier trusted parties
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0836 using tree structure or hierarchical structure
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/04 Key management, e.g. using generic bootstrapping architecture [GBA]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/63 Location-dependent; Proximity-dependent
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/68 Gesture-dependent or behaviour-dependent
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 84/18 Self-organising networks, e.g. ad-hoc networks or sensor networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/00 Reducing energy consumption in communication networks

Abstract

A measurement device (14) includes a measuring unit (42) for obtaining health related parameters of a patient (12), and a body-coupled communication unit (40) for sending at least measurement results. An identification device (20), associated with the patient, includes a body-coupled communication unit (26) for receiving and sending out the measurement results. A gateway device (72) includes a body-coupled communication unit (78) for receiving patient'"'"'s measurement results. Additionally, a hierarchical relational deployment model (100) facilitates grouping wireless devices in a healthcare environment into subgroups based on relationships between the devices, and a hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme (110) permits distribution of unique keying material for security domains of respective groups of devices, prior to deploying the devices in a healthcare network. Devices can then execute a handshake protocol by which they identify their deepest common node in the deployment model (100), and employ keying material assigned to that nodes group in the pre-distribution scheme (110) to facilitate granular communication security.

Claims

1. A patient monitoring system for monitoring health related parameters of a patient, the system comprising:

a measurement device including;

a measuring unit for obtaining measurements of the health related parameters of the patient, and

a body-coupled communication unit for sending at least measurement results;

an identification device, associated with the patient, including;

a body-coupled communication unit for receiving and sending out the measurement results; and

a gateway device which includes;

a body-coupled communication unit for receiving patient'"'"'s measurement results.

2. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the measuring unit further includes:

a sensor for measuring a physiological parameter of the patient.

3. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the identification device further includes:

a measurement memory for temporarily storing at least the measurement results.

4. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the measurement device further includes:

an electronic identification code memory for storing an identification code corresponding to the measurement device, from which memory the measurement device identification code is withdrawn to be sent to the patient identification device contemporaneously with the measurement results.

5. The system as set forth in claim 4, wherein the gateway device body-coupled communication unit associates the measurement results with the patient via the measurement device identification code which is preassigned to the measurement device.

6. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the gateway device further includes:

a gateway memory for storing the received patient'"'"'s measurement results.

7. The system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the patient identification device further includes:

an electronic patient identification code memory for storing a patient identification code of a corresponding patient, from which memory the patient identification code is withdrawn to be sent to the gateway device contemporaneously with the measurement results.

8. The system as set forth in claim 1, further including:

a plurality of identification devices, each associated with a corresponding patient;

at least one measurement device for measuring health related parameters of the patients; and

a gateway memory for downloading the results of measurements from the identification devices along with the identification codes of respective patients.

9. A measurement device for use in the system of claim 1.

10. An identification device for use in the system of claim 1.

11. The system as set forth in claim 1, further including a processor that generates a hierarchical relational deployment model (HRDM) comprising a tree structure of nodes representing one or more devices or sensors in the system.

12. The system as set forth in claim 11, wherein the processor generates a multi-layer hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme (HKPS) and assigns keying material to the one or more devices or sensors.

13. A measurement device which is intermittently used by at least one patient, comprising:

a measuring unit for measuring a health related parameter of the patient; and

a body-coupled communication unit for transmitting in a body-coupled communications format a memory packet including at least a value of the measured health related parameter to an identification device carried by the patient whose health related parameter is measured.

14. A patient identification device comprising:

a measurement memory which stores health related parameter measurements;

a patient identification code memory which stores a patient identification code; and

a body-coupled communication unit which communicates via body-coupled communications with a measurement device, which a patient has closely approached or touched, receives at least health related parameter measurements by body-coupled communications from the measurement device, which the patient has closely approached or touched, for storage in the measurement memory, and sends the stored health related parameter measurements and the patient identification code by body-coupled communications to a gateway device when the patient closely approaches or touches the gateway devices.

15. The device as set forth in claim 14, wherein the identification device is incorporated at least in one of:

decorative devices; and

apparel.

16. A method for measuring health related parameters of a patient, comprising:

measuring a health related parameter of the patient with a measurement device;

communicating the health related parameter measurement results from the measurement device to a patient identification device carried by the patient via body-coupled communication; and

communicating the measurement results from the identification device to a gateway device via body-coupled communication.

17. The method as set forth in claim 16, wherein the patient identification device includes a measurement memory and further including:

storing the measurement results in the measurement memory.

18. The method as set forth in claim 16, wherein the measuring unit includes a sensor and further including:

measuring a physiological function of the patient.

19. The method as set forth in claim 16, further including:

assigning measurement devices to the patients, each measurement device being encoded with an electronic device identification code that uniquely identifies the selected patient which it is assigned to;

communicating the electronic identification code of the measurement device to the measurement memory contemporaneously with the communicating the measurement results; and

associating the communicated measurement results with the patient via the electronic identification code of the measurement device.

20. The method as set forth in claim 16, further including:

assigning a patient identification device to the patient which identification device is encoded with an electronic patient identification code that uniquely identifies the patient which it is assigned to;

communicating the patient identification code to the gateway device contemporaneously with the communicating the measurement results; and

associating the communicated patient identification code with the communicated measurement results.

21. The method as set forth in claim 16, further including:

establishing a body-coupled communication link when the patient is proximate or touching the measurement device; and

establishing a body-coupled communication link when the patient is proximate or touching the gateway device.

22. The method as set forth in claim 16, further including:

assigning measurement devices to selected patients;

assigning a patient identification device to each patient, which each patient identification device is encoded with an electronic patient identification code that uniquely identifies the patient which it is assigned to;

communicating the patient identification code to the measurement device; and

associating the communicated patient identification code with the communicated measurement results.

23. The method as set forth in claim 16, further including generating a hierarchical relational deployment model (HRDM) including a tree structure of nodes representing one or more devices or sensors.

24. The method as set forth in claim 23, further including generating multi-level hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme (HKPS) and assigning unique keying material to each of a plurality of levels in the HKPS.

25. A system for monitoring health related parameters of each of a plurality of patients, the system comprising:

a measurement device including;

a measuring unit for obtaining health related parameters of each of the plurality of patients, and

a communication unit for communicating the health related parameter measurements;

patient identification devices, each being assigned to a respective patient, which each patient identification device includes;

an electronic patient identification code memory for storing a patient identification code,

a patient communication device for communicating the patient identification code and for receiving and communicating the health related parameter measurements, and

a memory for storing the received health related parameter measurements; and

a gateway device for receiving the health related parameter measurements and the patient identification codes communicated from the patient identification device.

26. The system as set forth in claim 25, wherein the health related parameter measurements and patient identification code of each patient are communicated via body-coupled communication.

27. The system as set forth in claim 25, wherein the patient communication device communicates the patient identification code to the measurement device and the measurement device further includes:

a processor which assembles the received patient identification code and the health related parameter measurements into an electronic pack which the measurement device communication device communicates to the patient identification device which subsequently communicates the electronic pack to the gateway device.

28. A gateway device which receives the health related parameter measurements from the identification device of claim 25 and associates the patient with the health related parameter measurements by one of an identification code assigned to the measurement device and the identification code assigned to the patient.

29. A method of hierarchical security management including:

generating an L-level hierarchical relational deployment model (HRDM) including a tree structure of nodes representing respective devices in a healthcare communication network;

generating multi-level hierarchical key pre-distribution scheme (HKPS) and assigning unique keying material to each of a plurality of levels in the HKPS;

pre-distributing the keying material to the devices in respective levels of the HKPS; and

deploying the devices in the healthcare communication network.

30. The method as set forth in claim 29, wherein generating the HRDM includes:

grouping nodes into subgroups; and

assigning the subgroups to levels in the HRDM.

31. The method as set forth in claim 30, further including:

generating a unique KPS for each subgroup in the HRDM; and

linking a security domain for each KPS to a its respective subgroup.

32. The method as set forth in claim 31, further including:

exchanging device identification information between two or more devices in the communication network; and

identifying a deepest common node in the HRDM from which the two or more device'"'"'s nodes depend; and

establishing a communication link between the two or more devices using the keying material associated with the security domain of the deepest common node'"'"'s subgroup.

33. The method as set forth in claim 29, wherein the keying material is of a different type for adjacent levels of the HKPS.

34. The method as set forth in claim 33, wherein the keying material is generated using one or more of a deterministic pairwise key pre-distribution scheme (DPKPS), a Blundo-type keying material scheme, a private key encryption protocol, public key encryption protocols, single-key encryption protocol, or a polynomial-key encryption protocol.