The research agenda of the hSITE Network is to develop an application-driven program of engineering research to design novel, advanced communications systems and infrastructures to improve healthcare efficiency through improved workflows, patient care, and safety. hSITE research targets advances in the areas of wireless communications, networking, middleware architecture, location technologies and smart systems, with a focal goal of improving healthcare delivery and clinical workflow efficiency.
Through inter-disciplinary collaboration between clinicians, engineers and computer scientists, the hSITE research program will strive to impact the way Information Technology (IT) is used to deliver safer, more efficient and cost-effective health care to all Canadians, both in hospitals and in home care settings.

The network has been divided into three research themes:

Each is linked by three cross­cutting healthcare contexts: Critical care; Homecare for seniors and people with disabilities; and Knowledge translation and decision support for chronic disease management.
An implementation of the research will be carried out through Demonstrations and Prototypes.

Theme 1: Clinical Workflows and Clinical Grade Requirements
                  J. Cafazzo (Lead), E. Borycki, M. Carter, M. Chignell, R. Cohen, D. Doran, A.                    Mihailidis, E. Seto,
The objective of research in Theme 1 is to investigate and identify the clinical and engineering application specifications for advanced communications solutions for healthcare enablement from both clinical and engineering perspectives. The theme comprises two major research projects with the overall goal to study, map and analyze key clinical workflows in order to identify potential deficiencies and ensuing threats to patient safety and to establish solutions and improvements to current communication and workflow processes based on these deficiencies. Understanding will be gained through investigation of technologies at the device level (IP phones, PDAs, computers), at the application level (user interface, information interpretation) and at the architectural level (context aware networks). Identification and description of system and end users’ requirements will allow appropriate options for improving communication solutions, communication architecture, and information support to be determined. This will result in proposed communications-based enhancements that will enable improvement of system efficiencies and development of new and improved workflows.

Theme 2: Context Aware Smart Sensors Systems, Software and Applications
                  R. Goubran (Lead), F. Knoefel, F. Labeau, P. Liu, D. Petriu, E. Petriu

The research in Theme 2 is devoted to the design and development of context aware, smart sensing systems and software applications and user interfaces that will meet the requirements of the application space (hospital or home care setting) and support the system architecture and user requirements defined in Theme 1. These systems have to satisfy the constraints of clinical reliability, high fault tolerance, fast response time, security, and privacy. Bandwidth and data storage needs that support these systems are also investigated.

The theme comprises three projects, each dealing with a specific dimension of context aware systems built from networks, sensors and software: one project will deal with the development of advanced software architectures and software design methodologies that inherently allow for verification and support of key non functional properties that are necessary in a clinical application, such as reliability, security, privacy, adaptability and performance; another project will develop algorithms and methods to ensure proper collection, fusion and transmission of information from many sensor systems in support of clinical workflows; and a third project will be devoted to evolutions of user interfaces and end user devices, developing new haptics-and voice- based controls, as well as data interpretation from video captures.

Theme 3: Enabling Networks and Technologies
                  M. Coates (Lead), T. Le-Ngoc, D. Plant, L. Rusch
Research in this theme builds on results obtained in Themes 1 and 2 and aims to develop systems and network architectures for deployment in a clinical setting.

The theme comprises two projects and aims to design the enabling software, technologies and network infrastructure required in clinical settings with the emphasis on safety, privacy, reliability and ease of use. Research in this theme is motivated by the requirements of the clinical setting where communications systems must monitor and adapt to the current situation and be capable of learning the nature of these situations, the network must auto-configure in response to identified contexts, and must comply with strict restrictions on the amount of electromagnetic interference (EMI) that a network can generate which is required to ensure safe operation of all electromagnetically sensitive clinical equipment in the area of operation.