Sensor aggregation and integration in healthcare location based services

Complex and dynamic working environments such as health care facilities consist of staff, patients and equipment constantly moving in response to changing medical requirements. Knowing the current location of people and equipment is essential for the smooth running of a facility, yet creating a global view through tracking is a challenging task. It is clear that many common hospital situations can be improved with real-time access to the various actors' location information. One of the main problems with implementing such services is that current location based applications tend to be proprietary and the data generated closed. The realisation of ubiquitous location based services demands the exploration of hybrid models and methods that can utilise existing and subsequent infrastructures in novel and complimentary ways. We describe a number of hospital scenarios that use location-based services and make available all the location data gathered. We propose that by aggregating location data by a range of acquisition methods it is possible to improve the performance of location applications and readily adapt to the introduction of new location detection technologies.