Abstract— Body sensor networks consisting of low-power onbody wireless sensors attached to mobile users will be used in the future to monitor the health and well being of patients in hospitals or at home. Such systems need to adapt autonomously to changes in context, user activity, device failure, and the availability or loss of services. To this end, we propose a policybased architecture that uses the concept of a Self-Managed Cell (SMC) to integrate services, managed resources and a policy interpreter by means of an event bus. Policies permit the declarative specification of adaptation strategy for selfconfiguration and self-management. We present the design and implementation of the SMC and describe its potential use in a scenario for management of heart monitoring. Preliminary performance measurements are also presented and discussed. Keywords - autonomic management; adaptive sensing; policybased adaptation; reconfigurable networks.