Requirements and Architecture of a Cloud Based Insomnia Therapy and Diagnosis Platform: A Smart Cities Approach

Abstract

Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder worldwide. Its effects generate economic costs in the millions but could be effectively reduced using digitally provisioned cognitive behavioural therapy. However, traditional acquisition and maintenance of the necessary technical infrastructure requires high financial and personnel expenses. Sleep analysis is still mostly done in artificial settings in clinical environments. Nevertheless, innovative IT infrastructure, such as mHealth and cloud service solutions for home monitoring, are available and allow context-aware service provision following the Smart Cities paradigm. This paper aims to conceptualise a digital, cloud-based platform with context-aware data storage that supports diagnosis and therapy of non-organic insomnia. In a first step, requirements needed for a remote diagnosis, therapy, and monitoring system are identified. Then, the software architecture is drafted based on the above mentioned requirements. Lastly, an implementation concept of the software architecture is proposed through selecting and combining eleven cloud computing services. This paper shows how treatment and diagnosis of a common medical issue could be supported effectively and cost-efficiently by utilising state-of-the-art technology. The paper demonstrates the relevance of context-aware data collection and disease understanding as well as the requirements regarding health service provision in a Smart Cities context. In contrast to existing systems, we provide a cloud-based and requirement-driven reference architecture. The applied methodology can be used for the development, design, and evaluation of other remote and context-aware diagnosis and therapy systems. Considerations of additional aspects regarding cost, methods for data analytics as well as general data security and safety are discussed.