Toward Efficient and Privacy-Aware eHealth Systems: An Integrated Sensing, Computing, and Semantic Communication Approach

Real-time and contactless monitoring of vital signs, such as respiration and heartbeat, alongside reliable communication, is essential for modern healthcare systems, especially in remote and privacy-sensitive environments. Traditional wireless communication and sensing networks fall short in meeting all the stringent demands of eHealth, including accurate sensing, high data efficiency, and privacy preservation. To overcome the challenges, we propose a novel integrated sensing, computing, and semantic communication (ISCSC) framework. In the proposed system, a service robot utilises radar to detect patient positions and monitor their vital signs, while sending updates to the medical devices. Instead of transmitting raw physiological information, the robot computes and communicates semantically extracted health features to medical devices. This semantic processing improves data throughput and preserves the clinical relevance of the messages, while enhancing data privacy by avoiding the transmission of sensitive data. Leveraging the estimated patient locations, the robot employs an interacting multiple model (IMM) filter to actively track patient motion, thereby enabling robust beam steering for continuous and reliable monitoring. We then propose a joint optimisation of the beamforming matrices and the semantic extraction ratio, subject to computing capability and power budget constraints, with the objective of maximising both the semantic secrecy rate and sensing accuracy. Simulation results validate that the ISCSC framework achieves superior sensing accuracy, improved semantic transmission efficiency, and enhanced privacy preservation compared to conventional joint sensing and communication methods.