A Remote Health Monitoring Messenger

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

ABSTRACT

Health is an important factor of every human being. Remote health monitoring messenger is needed for the people to reduce their inconvenience in travel to hospitals due to ail in health. Ill patient requires accurate decision to be taken immediately in critical situations, so that life-protecting and life-saving therapy can be properly applied. In recent years sensors are used in each and every fast developing application for designing the miniaturized system which is much easier for people use. A remote health monitoring messenger informs the doctor about the patient condition through wireless media such as Global System for Mobile communication. Distances can be too short or long ranging from thousands to millions of kilometers for communication. The system specifically deals with the signal conditioning and data acquisition of heart rate, temperature, and blood pressure of human body. The Heart rate sensor was designed to read the patient’s beats per minute (bpm) and temperature sensor used to measure the body temperature through external skin and pressure sensor used to measure the level of pressure in blood. Signals obtained from sensors are fed into the microcontroller for processing and medicine is prescribed as first aid for patient to control the parameters through visual basic, then message is sent to the doctor for further actions to be taken for treatment of patient after first aid. The system has a very good response time and it is cost effective.

Keywords: Remote Health Monitoring, Global System for Mobile communication (GSM), PIC Microcontroller, Wireless Sensor Network node, Visual Basic

INTRODUCTION

In earlier days large devices were used in many applications which are not so comfortable for the people usage. Especially in health monitoring system devices such as Home Transmitting Unit (HTU) is connected to the medical instruments at the patient side used to collect and transmit the physiological parameters information to the receiver side [M.Triventi]. In spite of those large devices sensors are used to miniaturize the system which is easy for the people usage in order of sensing and transmitting the information to the respective caretaker.

Recent developments are taking place in each and every application. In medical field health is an important concern. Health monitoring system plays a major role in the fast moving world were many developments are done to monitor the health in various ways such as sensors are used to monitor the physiological parameters of human being. The sensors can be contactable and non-contactable; information about patient health can be collected and transferred to the caretaker through information gateway such as mobile phones [Shyamal Patel].

Nowadays biomedical sensors are used in fast developing world to detect and control the physiological parameters of people. Wireless transmission technology is used for the purpose of communication between the patient and respective caretaker. Wireless health monitoring systems are getting improved to provide real time care for patient. The zigbee network is used for the transmission of data [zhang qing]. The Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) is used as a well known network for immediate response to the patient whereas zigbee network also did the same it is applicable for certain short ranging distance and also requires more amount of zigbee nodes have to be implemented which leads to the increase in cost.

In remote health monitoring messenger mobile phone plays a major role for sending Short Message Service (SMS). The sensors used in the system to detect the values of physiological parameters whereas the detected parameters are sent to the caretaker through the SMS gateway based on health status of patient. The digital outputs of sensors are transferred to the Graphical User Interface of Visual Basic in order to show the each and every detail of detected parameters of a patient which reveals the patient health condition and treatment to be carried out by the doctor to respective person [B.Priya].

AMON system is the most popular remote health system, a wearable medical monitoring system for cardiac patients allow continuous monitoring of physiological signals for advancement in diagnosis and treatment. Blood pressure monitoring provides patient’s measured detail of pressure according to two pressure levels. Most ambulatory blood pressure monitoring devices rely on the repeated measurement of systolic and diastolic blood pressure at predetermined intervals. Invasive monitoring schemes supply such information and they are limited due to arterial damage and infection. Non-invasive monitoring schemes are essential to acquire such information for the development of devices [Paul Lukowicz].

A health monitoring system with nurse call station was implemented especially for the bedridden patient in hospital who does not have communication with others. The push button is employed in a bed of patient to initiate call and to alert the nurse during the abnormal situations for the treatment to proceed. The call can also be initiated automatically to respective caretaker. The automatic call can be initiated due to exceeded values of normal physiological parameters. The unique identification number is provided for patient where the details of patient can be indicated to nurse through voice message and SMS [S.Aswin N.Gopalakrishnan].

LITERATURE SURVEY

Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks are a promising technology which enables health monitoring of elderly people and enhances their independent living. This paper proposes the system architecture and protocol stack of a Wireless Body Area Sensor Network for health monitoring of elderly people. The architecture can be deployed in both indoor and outdoor environments and enables transmission of both routine and emergency vital signs. The WBASN consists of a pulse oximeter sensor which monitors the blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) and heart rate (HR) and an Electrocardiogram sensor (ECG) for monitoring heart activity. This project is based on Zigbee technology [1].

Online database system for remote monitoring of artificial heart patient has been developed were the remote terminal can be either of two types, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistance) based portable monitor or a laptop PC based terminal for hospital use that have more data acquisition functions not included in the PDA type utilizing extra communication port or data acquisition board. The portable monitor based on a PDA is linked to the implanted Artificial Heart (AH) controller via an exteriorized percutaneous cable or a transcutaneous wireless telemetry system using an IrDA-based infrared communication device. The communication protocol is RS-232C .The laptop PC based terminal has three additional functions such as data acquisition through patient monitors, direct remote monitoring via TCP/IP direct connection, and image capture functions. For patient monitoring the developed software implements two types of system interface, serial communication port interface used for certain types of patient monitoring that provide digitized data through serial port and a data acquisition board based interface for direct analog signal capture [2].

Wearable sensors tend to use emerging wireless transmission solutions like Bluetooth and ZigBee technology to improve mobility and minimize power consumption of the system. These inventions carries out some advantages such as the patients often are released from the hospital to give the priority to other heart patients on the waiting list, whom need to be hospitalized immediately. It does not only have an important positive economic impact, but it also produces an increment of the social wellbeing. These types of communication will only work for shorter distance and duration [Karandeep Malhi].

A study was done to determine the types of vital signs that are routinely measured for a patient by doctor. The vital signs are body temperature, pulse rate and detection of fall. Estimation of Mean-body Temperature (MBT) from Mean-skin and Core Temperature deals with measurement of body tissues mass-weighted average temperature. Core temperature is easy to measure, but direct temperature measurement of peripheral tissue is complex [Rainer Lenhardt].

Wireless Biomedical System Design based on ZigBee Technology for Autonomous Healthcare deals with monitoring of vital signals. The system is two tiered used for gathering and processing biomedical signals. First is the device carried on the body that runs a number of biosensors and second is processing by a local base station using the raw data transmitted on request by the mobile device [N.Hamza].

Smart wearable systems for personalized health management deals with remote health monitoring to improve the quality of health services and to reduce the cost by avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations and ensuring that those who need urgent care. System contributes to the enhancement of disease prevention with cost effective telemedicine platform [4].

Network Approach for Physiological Parameters Measurement deals with portable parameter monitoring and analysis system for physiological studies and for assisting patient centric health care management. Data from sensors are acquired and transmitted to a server by network through wireless connection. Acquisition and monitoring of physiological parameters are automated by system and displayed on the monitoring screen [5].

SYSTEM OVERVIEW

A Remote Health Monitoring Messenger consists of three main modules data acquisition module, data processing module and data communication module. The data acquisition module consists of sensors used to sense the signals of physiological parameters of human body such as temperature, heart rate and pressure. The detected signals are sent to the data processing module which is used to process the measured signals into a certain value and if the value gets exceeded than normal value the medicine will be given as a first aid for patient which is displayed on the personal computer at patient side and SMS is sent to the doctor by communication module of GSM through mobile phones by information gateway for the treatment to be taken.

Figure 1. System Overview

SYSTEM DESIGN

Three sensors are contained in the data acquisition module such as temperature sensor, heart rate sensor and pressure sensor.