Chorleywood Health Centre has placed its first patient on their Hydra network of smart electricity meters and is now monitoring the weight and blood pressure of the patient in their own home. The system uses Zigbee wireless technology to send readings from the devices from anywhere in the home to the smart electricity meter. The meter then sends the reading through to the health centre for staff t...
Chorleywood Health Centre has placed its first patient on their Hydra network of smart electricity meters and is now monitoring the weight and blood pressure of the patient in their own home. The system uses Zigbee wireless technology to send readings from the devices from anywhere in the home to the smart electricity meter. The meter then sends the reading through to the health centre for staff to review. The purpose-built surgery was opened in 1997 and provides comprehensive general medical services including treatment and prevention of illness, health promotion and screening services. The Health Centre has been selected to participate in three major research projects that will investigate how technology can be used to better manage patients with chronic diseases. The Hydra project investigates the exciting concept of using smart electricity meters to act as a method to allow patients to make simple measurements of blood pressure or weight and send them automatically so that they can be monitored by practice staff. The Reaction project is investigating advanced techniques to monitor and manage patients with diabetes. The inCasa project is investigating ways to assist frail elderly patients at home.
This example shows that Smart Grid deployments are not only delivering improved energy security, grid reliability, and providing consumer control, but they are helping to bring the Internet of Things (IoT) closer and in seemingly unrelated every day applications far from high technology applications.
The concept of the IoT is a common global IT platform of seamless networks and networked "things”, that can be regarded as an extension of the existing interaction between humans and applications through the new dimension of “things”, communications and integration. There are some 18 IoT application domains of which the Smart Grid is a specialized one related to energy and the environment. In this small to large networks connect devices and use embedded intelligence in the forms of sensing and control to deliver and manage electricity, minimizing or eliminating the need for human interactions to achieve those same objectives. However the Smart Grid also straddles across Intelligent Cities and Buildings, Environmental Monitoring and as we have seen in the example above Independent Living.
Smart Grid will eventually be deployed across all utility networks, commercial, industrial and domestic buildings covering all geographic areas of countries right across the world. It will become the major application domain of the IoT and its nomenclature is more likely then to be referred to the Internet of Energy.
China in particular has a very ambitious Strategic Research Roadmap for IoT in the urban management field. General urban networks-based integration will be carried out to achieve integrated management of municipal administration, water management, real estate, landscape, environment and urban control, so as to improve the urban and social management and public services with enhanced management, quick and effective response and all-round and all-time coverage. The specific tasks include public facilities monitoring system, public early warning and monitoring system, high-definition fire control monitoring system, wireless vehicle management system, dangerous goods monitoring system, as well as urban emergency management, command and coordination platform.