This paper discusses the perspectives of using a wake-up receiver (WUR) in wireless body area network (WBAN) applications with event-driven data transfers. First we compare energy efficiency between the WUR-based and the duty-cycled medium access control protocol -based IEEE 802.15.6 compliant WBAN. Then, we review the architectures of state-of-the-art WURs and discuss their suitability for WBANs. The presented results clearly show that the radio frequency envelope detection based architecture features the lowest power consumption at a cost of sensitivity. The other architectures are capable of providing better sensitivity, but consume more power. Finally, we propose the design modification that enables using a WUR to receive the control commands beside the wake-up signals. The presented results reveal that use of this feature does not require complex modifications of the current architectures, but enables to improve energy efficiency and latency for small data blocks transfers.

The average age of population is predicted to be raised universally but the number of nursing staff is not increasing at the same rate. This leads us to the situation where, e.g., we have too many patients for one nurse. On the other hand, sparse population in some regions, such as Northern or Eastern Finland, causes a severe problem that doctors are far away from patient. In this paper, we summarize the possibilities and applications that utilize wireless technologies in healthcare sector and which can be useful in nursing activities. The use of new innovations is one way to solve the problems that are based on the expected lack of professional staff in the future. Despite of the very natural hospital link, the developed technical solutions have applications outside hospital. Remote care of aging people and other special groups need to be done daily and almost real-time. Keeping people home instead of hospital is one way to decrease the entire care costs. In addition to the obvious human context, we derive some other applications where we can benefit wireless nursing and remote sensing techniques.

This paper provides perspectives for future medical healthcare social services and businesses that integrate advanced information and communication technology (ICT) and data science. First, we propose a universal medical healthcare platform that consists of wireless body area network (BAN), cloud network and edge computer, big data mining server and repository with machine learning. Technical aspects of the platform are discussed, including the requirements of reliability, safety and security, i.e., so-called dependability. In addition, novel technologies for satisfying the requirements are introduced. Then primary uses of the platform for personalized medicine and regulatory compliance, and its secondary uses for commercial business and sustainable operation are discussed. We are aiming at operate the universal medical healthcare platform, which is based on the principle of regulatory science, regionally and globally. In this paper, trials carried out in Kanagawa, Japan and Oulu, Finland will be revealed to illustrate a future medical healthcare social infrastructure by expanding it to Asia-Pacific, Europe and the rest of the world. We are representing the activities of Kanagawa medical device regulatory science center and a joint proposal on security in the dependable medical healthcare platform. Novel schemes of ubiquitous rehabilitation based on analyses of the training effect by remote monitoring of activities and machine learning of patient's electrocardiography (ECG) with a neural network are proposed and briefly investigated.