studies are focusing on proving the effectiveness of applying home telemonitoring on
COPD patients, by studying the services that could be provided and their impacts on the
patient’s quality-of-life. However, none of these studies has provided a comprehensive
proposal for a telemonitoring system that helps to control the burden of COPD.
We aim to design a telemonitoring healthcare application that helps COPD patients
with self-management and improve their quality of life, therefore reducing pressures on
healthcare resources. We must develop a system that uses this data to provide an
effective intervention that prevents exacerbation through the early recognition of
symptoms and prompt treatment which may reduce the risk of hospitalization and
control the burden of COPD. Based on this healthcare requirement, we realized the
need of combining context awareness and self-adaptation with health telemonitoring,
which will give our system the ability to be aware of the patient’s data and context, then
to adapt the required changes and act accordingly.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the
concept of context-awareness and reviews the most common forms of self-adaptation
frameworks. Section 3 highlights the characteristics of self-adaptive systems. Section 4
presents our self-adaptation healthcare system for COPD. Section 5 then validates the
proposed approach. Finally, Sect. 6 presents our conclusions.
2 Context Awareness and Self-adaptation Systems
2.1 Background
The notion of context has appeared implicitly for the first time in the ubiquitous
computing area in 1993 by Weiser “all the information that should be taken into
consideration for an adjustment” [9]. Lieberman et al. [10] proposed another interpretation of the context that exists within the field of computing: “context can be
considered to be everything that affects the computation”. This definition focuses on
the application instead of the user, but nowadays with the widespread of mobile
applications that focus on the user’s lifestyle, health, and activities the factors that affect
the user and these that affect the computation process become almost the same.
In software systems, context awareness notion is mostly coupled with selfadaptation capability otherwise, there is no point in collecting contextual data. Selfadaptation is a set of simultaneous and successive processes as an organized reaction to
changes in the resources or environment of the system [11]. Self-adaptive systems
dynamically modify their behaviors to respond effectively to changes in their operational environment [12]. In the next section, an overview of many self-adaptation
frameworks is provided.
2.2 Self-adaptations Frameworks
Rainbow framework provides general mechanisms for developing reusable selfadaptive systems at a variety of different levels [13]. Model-Driven Approach is an
automated self-adaptive model that supports adding and removing technical resources at
run-time [14]. Meta-Self is a service-oriented framework that provides a solid platform
308
H. Mcheick et al.
COPD patients, by studying the services that could be provided and their impacts on the
patient’s quality-of-life. However, none of these studies has provided a comprehensive
proposal for a telemonitoring system that helps to control the burden of COPD.
We aim to design a telemonitoring healthcare application that helps COPD patients
with self-management and improve their quality of life, therefore reducing pressures on
healthcare resources. We must develop a system that uses this data to provide an
effective intervention that prevents exacerbation through the early recognition of
symptoms and prompt treatment which may reduce the risk of hospitalization and
control the burden of COPD. Based on this healthcare requirement, we realized the
need of combining context awareness and self-adaptation with health telemonitoring,
which will give our system the ability to be aware of the patient’s data and context, then
to adapt the required changes and act accordingly.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 introduces the
concept of context-awareness and reviews the most common forms of self-adaptation
frameworks. Section 3 highlights the characteristics of self-adaptive systems. Section 4
presents our self-adaptation healthcare system for COPD. Section 5 then validates the
proposed approach. Finally, Sect. 6 presents our conclusions.
2 Context Awareness and Self-adaptation Systems
2.1 Background
The notion of context has appeared implicitly for the first time in the ubiquitous
computing area in 1993 by Weiser “all the information that should be taken into
consideration for an adjustment” [9]. Lieberman et al. [10] proposed another interpretation of the context that exists within the field of computing: “context can be
considered to be everything that affects the computation”. This definition focuses on
the application instead of the user, but nowadays with the widespread of mobile
applications that focus on the user’s lifestyle, health, and activities the factors that affect
the user and these that affect the computation process become almost the same.
In software systems, context awareness notion is mostly coupled with selfadaptation capability otherwise, there is no point in collecting contextual data. Selfadaptation is a set of simultaneous and successive processes as an organized reaction to
changes in the resources or environment of the system [11]. Self-adaptive systems
dynamically modify their behaviors to respond effectively to changes in their operational environment [12]. In the next section, an overview of many self-adaptation
frameworks is provided.
2.2 Self-adaptations Frameworks
Rainbow framework provides general mechanisms for developing reusable selfadaptive systems at a variety of different levels [13]. Model-Driven Approach is an
automated self-adaptive model that supports adding and removing technical resources at
run-time [14]. Meta-Self is a service-oriented framework that provides a solid platform
308
H. Mcheick et al.