Abstract

Wearable devices and wireless communications, combined with personalized health management, are future trends that healthcare practices and procedures are heading toward. To facilitate this progress, new technologies and methods are required to provide reliable measurements, end-to-end communications, and data analysis mechanisms from the data source to medical health records. The wireless body area network (WBAN) is the major element in this process. This Special Section is not only limited to on-body WBAN devices but also focuses on benefitting technologies which can distribute vital information inside a human body or allow control of implantable gadgets. Dependable wireless communications combined with versatile application areas, such as accurate localization or behavior analysis techniques, remote monitoring, adoption of vital sensors, and actuators, can benefit the increased use of new WBAN technologies in various healthcare-related studies. In the end, this will make healthcare processes more effective and user friendly, and simultaneously increase the safety of (out)patients. This Special Section focuses on various theoretical and experimental views on WBAN applications, technologies, implementations, and utilizations based on invited, extended versions of the best-evaluated articles from BodyNets 2018, held at Oulu, Finland, in October 2018, as well as quality articles submitted from the Open Call. This Special Section includes 16 accepted articles which have undergone a rigorous peer-review process. Three of the accepted articles were invited extensions of the articles presented at the BodyNets 2018 conference. The total number of submissions we received for this Special Section was 45; thus, the acceptance rate was 36%.