Healthcare is in expanding demands due to doctor shortages, crowded waiting rooms, long delays, and rising costs. On the other hand, there is an increasing number of personal communication devicesaround the human body such as cell phone, PDA, etc.  Also, there are new sensing and monitoring devices for in-body (data, image) and on-body uses (video, audio, data). Those devices can form a self-organized sensor and ad hoc network, called wireless body area network (WBAN).  Remote Healthcare System (RHS) based on WBAN has attracted significant attention recently since it not only cares for onsite patients, but also extends these benefits to anyone demanding healthcare beyond medical facilities. In addition, it can act as a dedicated virtual doctor and nurse, providing healthcare anywhere, around-the-clock.

Xuemin (Sherman) Shen (IEEE M’97-SM’02-F’09) received the B.Sc.(1982) degree from Dalian Maritime University (China) and the M.Sc. (1987) and Ph.D. degrees (1990) from Rutgers University, New Jersey (USA), all in electrical engineering. He is a University Research Chair Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada. His research focuses on mobility and resource management in interconnected wireless/wired networks, UWB wireless communications networks, wireless network security, wireless body area networks and vehicular ad hoc and sensor networks. He is a co-author of three books, and has published more than 400 papers and book chapters in wireless communications and networks, control and filtering. Dr. Shen is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Communications Society. He serves as the Tutorial Chair for IEEE ICC’08, the Technical Program Committee Chair for IEEE Globecom’07, the General Co-Chair for Chinacom’07 and QShine’06, the Founding Chair for IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on P2P Communications and Networking. He also serves as a Founding Area Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS; Editor-in-Chief for PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKING AND APPLICATION; Associate Editor for IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY; KICS/IEEE JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS, COMPUTER NETWORKS; ACM/WIRELESS NETWORKS and WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING (Wiley), etc. He has also served as Guest Editor for IEEE JSAC, IEEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE, and ACM MOBILE NETWORKS AND APPLICATIONS, etc. Dr. Shen received the Excellent Graduate Supervision Award in 2006, and the Outstanding Performance Award in 2004 and 2008 from the University of Waterloo, the Premier’s Research Excellence Award (PREA) in 2003 from the Province of Ontario, Canada.