Internet of Wearable and Implantable Medical Things: Theory and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Body-worn and implanted medical sensors and actuators will revolutionize the next generation healthcare in the form of Internet of Medical Things (IoMT). Connected networks of body devices would enable in-situ monitoring of physiological conditions, need neuro-muscular stimulation and localized precision medicine. These body devices need to communicate sensed measurements, drug volumes and actuating directives, not only to an external monitoring station, but also among peer body devices, both on the surface of the body and embedded as implants, by exploiting the wireless communication platforms appropriate for IoMT. This emerging paradigm requires revisiting the classical modes of over-the-air RF communication, as the body channel is a very different medium. Specifically, through-tissue intra-body communication requires energy-efficient hardware, protocols, algorithms and applications and has to be strictly within safety and reliability bounds. The signals used for such communication may be diverse: RF signals in the kilohertz band (e.g., baseband transmission using galvanic coupling (GC)), megahertz band (e.g., baseband transmission using capacitive coupling (CC), Medical Implants Communication Systems (MICS), Wireless Medical Telemetry Service (WMTS)), gigahertz band (e.g., Ultra-Wide Band), and terahertz band, or non-RF signals such as ultrasound (US), Inductive Coupling (IC), molecular communication, and optical technology.

The technology transformation from the air medium to tissue medium has to address numerous challenges, including energy replenishment for a system operating at the highest levels of reliability with ultra-small energy constrained hard to reach devices, channel estimation of the tissue medium with complex structure and temporal electrical behavior, energy efficient resource allocation, long-term impacts of continuous signal propagation, communication demands including modulation and medium access techniques to ensure extremely low latency, communication security and body-friendly network topology, among others.

This Special Issue on IoMT is envisaged to showcase emerging technologies for wireless communication in and on the body, resulting in new healthcare applications that can be lifesaving or can significantly improve the quality of life. Envisioned applications include, but are not limited to, remote monitoring of intra-organ functions, continuous assessment of ailments, biomedical therapy, remote surgery, post-operative rehabilitation, biometric authentication, and many more. This Special Issue will highlight the enabling wireless communication technologies, architectures, system design demonstration and development, testbeds, empirical analyses, as well as simulations that support the body network objectives. Emphasis will be on breakthrough research in device/network co-design solutions that efficiently integrate medical things, cyber-physical-biological capabilities, computing, body channel and intra-body as well as extra-body communication systems that necessarily go beyond classical and well explored over-the-air RF communication. Technical contributions that exploit context awareness at body level, activity level, ambient environment level and application level to dramatically improve the communication performance across multiple wireless networking parameters and dimensions are also encouraged.

Prof. Dr. Kaushik Roy Chowdhury
Dr. Anna Vizziello
Dr. Meenpriya Swaminathan
Guest Editors

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