Wearable Sensor Networks for Measuring Face-to-Face Contact Patterns in Healthcare Settings.

Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Vittoria Colizza, Lorenzo Isella, Caterina Rizzo, Alberto E. Tozzi and Wouter Van den Broeck. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International ICST Conference on Electronic Healthcare for the 21st century (eHealth 2010). Casablanca, Morocco, December 2010.

Abstract

We describe the experimental deployment of a network of wearable sensors that allows the tracking of the location and mutual proximity of individuals in a hospital ward, in real time and at a large scale. In the course of the deployment, all individuals accessing the premises were monitored for a period of one week, including health care personnel, patients, visitors and tutors. The data collected yields a rich dynamical picture of the contact patterns between individuals and between categories of individuals. As an example, here we show that by constructing a cumulative weighted contact network aggregating the dynamical data on the entire duration of the deployment, it is possible to reliably uncover persistent relations among individuals.

BIBTEX:

@inproceedings{Barrat:2010tw,
  Title = {Wearable Sensor Networks for Measuring Face-to-Face Contact Patterns in Healthcare Settings},
  Author = {Barrat, Alain and Cattuto, Ciro and Colizza, Vittoria and Isella, Lorenzo and
    Rizzo, Caterina and Tozzi, Alberto E. and {Van den Broeck}, Wouter},
  Booktitle = {Proceedings of the 3rd International ICST Conference on Electronic Healthcare for the 21st century (eHealth 2010)},
  Editor = {Szomszor, Martin and Kostkova, Patty},
  Keywords = {SocioPatterns},
  Year = {2011}}