KOPERA

Projects / 4G enabled gateway for a remote patient monitoring SaaS

The development of a 4G enabled Gateway for patient data collection, analysis, and upload to the cloud.

Background

Norsk Telemedisin AS has been operating in the prediction and prevention of diseases through remote patient monitoring solutions since 2014. They approached KOPERA to build OmsynHeim, a SaaS offering for care providers. KOPERA was tasked with the architecture, design and implementation of a 4G enabled gateway for OmsynHeim.

OmsynHeim required the development of a 4G enabled gateway for data collection, analysis, cloud upload, and on-demand audio and video streaming.

With so many features to get right, laying down a robust foundation for the project was crucial. Ideating the product, designing the hardware requirements, and building a solid Linux system distribution using Yocto were the first steps in bringing this product to life.

Data collection required the integration of a multiplicity of sensors connected over Bluetooth, Wifi, or USB, as well as putting in place a fault tolerant and highly available sensor collector software. While careful implementation of the communication protocols made for a seamless plug and play experience, leveraging the advantages of Erlang/OTP allowed us to smoothly handle any issues of sensor instability or unreliability in the field. This was a major requirement to allow for extremely high availability, strong encryption, and timely data delivery.

A real-time on-demand audio and video streaming feature was also implemented as part of the project to allow for non-intrusive patient monitoring using an infrared camera. Based on webRTC, we delivered a fully encrypted peer-to-peer communication channel for real time video and audio streaming between the gateway and the viewer cutting on centralised communication costs and improving security.

Needless to say, given the sensitive nature of the data, security of our infrastructure and communication protocols was pervasive throughout the whole process, from ideation to product delivery.

Challenges

  1. High availability requirements
  2. Unreliable sensors
  3. WiFi interference challenges

Technologies

  • u-boot
  • Linux
  • Yocto
  • Erlang
  • GStreamer
  • MQTT
  • TLS
  • USB
  • Wifi
  • Bluetooth (BlueZ)
  • 4G
  • WebRTC