An autonomic cloud environment for hosting ECG data analysis services

Advances in sensor technology, personal mobile devices, wireless broadband communications, and Cloud computing are enabling real-time collection and dissemination of personal health data to patients and health-care professionals anytime and from anywhere. Personal mobile devices, such as PDAs and mobile phones, are becoming more powerful in terms of processing capabilities and information management and play a major role in peoples daily lives. This technological advancement has led us to design a real-time health monitoring and analysis system that is Scalable and Economical for people who require frequent monitoring of their health. In this paper, we focus on the design aspects of an autonomic Cloud environment that collects peoples health data and disseminates them to a Cloud-based information repository and facilitates analysis on the data using software services hosted in the Cloud. To evaluate the software design we have developed a prototype system that we use as an experimental testbed on a specific use case, namely, the collection of electrocardiogram (ECG) data obtained at real-time from volunteers to perform basic ECG beat analysis. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.