PATIENT HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEM USING IOT IN HOSPITAL
MANAGEMENT
1
N. N. M Azambi, 2S. N. Azemi, 3N. Yaakob
1
Advanced Communication Engineering Center (ACE),
School of Computer and Communication Engineering,
University Malaysia Perlis.
Corresponding author:nurulnabilaazambi@gmail.com, snorlyana@unimap.edu.my
Recently, Malaysia was ranked the first of having the Best Health-care in the World category
by 2019 International Living Annual Global Retirement Index. According to International
Living, Malaysia was ranked top for its world-class health-care services and sophisticated
infrastructure. However, the idea of health monitoring system where the doctor can monitor
the patient health parameter via android application is essentially new in Malaysia. Thus, this
project proposed a modest, microcontroller-based patient health monitoring system with
android application as an output. This project is focus on the real time monitoring system by
using ThingSpeak application. Where in the ThingSpeak, doctors and nurses can monitor
their patient health status anywhere. Other focuses in this project is the implementation of
health-care sensor which include the temperature sensor and the pulse sensor to be develop
to sense the patient vital sign to be wirelessly monitored by the doctor using installed android
application. The sensor and the application are connected wirelessly using Wi-Fi.
Keyword: IoT, healthcare, sensor, monitoring system, android application
INTRODUCTION
In this fast pace of life, the “Internet of Things” application continuously grows and changing
the world. Typical IoT component allows public to innovate new designs to market [1]. Smart
campus, smart parking and smart city are ones that used IoT concept in their daily application.
One such application is in healthcare is to monitor the patient health condition via Internet of
Things. This by allowing real-time monitoring of patient health status.
Besides that, [2] the healthcare sensors are playing the important role in hospital and
the patients’ health monitoring system is one of the major improvement due to its advanced
technology. A journal by [3] mentioned that the growth of internet services and wireless
sensor network has open up opportunities in healthcare.
Recently, Malaysia was ranked the first of having the Best Healthcare in the World
category by 2019 International Living Annual Global Retirement Index. According to
International Living, Malaysia was ranked top for its world-class healthcare services and
sophisticated infrastructure [4]. However, the idea of health monitoring system where the
doctor can monitor the patient health parameter via android application is essentially new in
Malaysia.
Thus, this project proposed a simple, microcontroller based patient health monitoring
system with android application as an output. This project is focus on the real time monitoring
system by using ThingSpeak application. Where in the ThingSpeak, doctors and nurses can
monitor their patient health status anywhere.
Other focuses in this project is the implementation of healthcare sensor which include
the temperature sensor and the pulse sensor to be develop to sense the patient vital sign to be
wirelessly monitored by the doctor using installed android application. The sensor and the
application are connected wirelessly using Wi-Fi.
Previous method that been done for health routine checkup is by visiting the hospital
even common regular checkup can be done at home hence patient tend to waste their time
waiting for their turn visiting the doctor. This can be done at home and reporting it via online.
Besides that, data of the patient tend to be lost as no back up that has been done. So by using
IoT, all data can be send to the cloud. Last but not least, data of the patient cannot be monitor
or view in real time. Hence to overcome this problem, patient health monitoring system in
hospital management using IoT is designed.
PATIENT HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT
System Overview
The overall block diagram is shown in Figure 1. The proposed system consist of Arduino
Uno which is the main controller. Two types of sensors used in this system is temperature
sensor and pulse sensor. For this system, temperature model LM35 are used to get the body
temperature because of its accuracy. These two sensor are connected to the Arduino Uno.
The sensed data are sent wirelessly to the cloud by using ESP8266-01 Wi-Fi module.
ThingSpeak platform will displayed the result in the form of graph. An additional android
application is created by using MIT App Inventor for doctors to monitor their patient in real
time.
Figure 1: System block diagram
Sensors
This paper only focusing on temperature sensor and pulse rate sensor.
A temperature sensor is a device that collects the data about temperature from a
particular source and converts the data into understandable form for a device or an observer.
There are several types of temperature sensor which is thermocouple, thermistor,
semiconductor sensor and infrared sensor. Temperature sensor model LM35 are chosen
because it is suitable for measuring human body temperature. With LM35, temperature can
be measured more accurately than with a thermistor. It also possess low self-heating. The
operating temperature range is from -55°C to 150°C. Figure 2 shows the temperature sensor.
Pulse sensor used in this project is a well-designed plug-and-play heart-rate sensor
for Arduino. It can be used by students, artists, athletes, makers, and game & mobile
developers who want to easily incorporate live heart rate data into their projects. Notes that
this sensor is not medical or FDA approved. It is purely intended for hobby projects/demos
and should not be used for health critical applications. The operating voltage for the pulse
sensor is +5V and +3.3V. It consume about 4Ma of current. It has inbuilt amplification and
noise cancellation circuit. The thicknesses of the sensor is about 0.125 inch. Figure 3 shows
the pulse sensor used in this project.
Figure 2: LM35 temperature sensor
Figure 3: Pulse sensor
Data Display
To send data to the cloud, the system must be connected to the Wi-Fi network. To do so,
ESP8266-01 Wi-Fi module is connected to the Arduino Uno. Figure 4 shows the Wi-Fi
module used to connect to the Wi-Fi network. This allow real time monitoring.
Figure 4: ESP8288-01 Wi-Fi module
The sensed data are displayed through a ThingSpeak in the form of graphs. ThingSpeak
is a platform that collect and store data in cloud.
Android App Development
For the monitoring part, a graphical user interface (GUI) needs to be developed. There are
many types of user interface available including android application, web based platform,
software and hardware display. For this project, the user (doctor or nurse) need to check and
analyses their patient condition. Thus a simple android application for monitoring purposes
a created by using MIT App Inventor. Doctors are able to view the list of their patient as well
as their health records.
Figure 5 shows the log in page for the apps. This android application only can be
accessed by certain authorities that have been registered by the admin in the database system.
Figure 6 shows the list of the patients.
Figure 5: Log in page
Figure 6: Patient list.
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
Experiment set up
The system were set up as shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7: Experiment set up.
ThingSpeak
There are two types of graph for this system which is for temperature and pulse rate graph.
The graph will update for every 15sec if the sensors detect the reading. Figure 8 and 9 show
the graph result in ThingSpeak platform. Temperature is recorded in Fahrenheit while pulse
rate is measured in BPM.
Figure 8: Temperature graph
Figure 9: Pulse rate graph.
Android Application
Figure 10 shows the results that can be monitored through the android application.
Figure 10: Result in android apps.
The normal temperature for the adult is between 97(36.1 °C) to 99 (37.2 °C) in Fahrenheit.
While for pulse rate for a normal person, the reading is between 60 bpm to 100 bpm. Due to
the device sensitivity, the result of the pulse sensor keeps getting the reading above 100 bpm.
CONCLUSION
A patient health monitoring system is successfully developed. This project had achieved to
create a detector device that capable to sense the temperature and pulse rate as well as sending
the reading data into cloud wirelessly through Wi-Fi network. Thus this can ease the doctors
to monitor and analyze the patient condition via android application.
REFERENCE
[1] R. Kumar & M. Pallikonda Rajasekaran, “ An IoT based patient monitoring system using
raspberry pi”, 2016 International Conference on Computing Technologies and Intelligent
Data Engineering, 2016.
[2] J. Adivarekar,A. Chordia & H. Baviskar, “Patient Monitoring System Using GSM
Technology”, International Journal of Mathematics and Computer Research,2013,vol 1
(2), pp. 73-78
[3] R. Dobrescu, D. Popescu, M. Dobrescu & M. Nicolae, “Intergration of WSN-based
platform in a homecare monitoring system”, Latest Trends on Communications and
Information Technology, 2008, pp. 165-170.
[4] Thestar.com.my. (2019). Malaysia ranks 1st in world's best healthcare category - Nation
The
Star
Online.
[online]
Available
at:
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2019/02/07/malaysia-ranks-1st-in-worldsbest-healthcare-category/ [Accessed 28 May 2019].
[5]Alex Newton. IoT based Patient Health Monitoring System. Retrieved from
https://www.how2electronics.com/iot-patient-health-monitoring-system-esp8266/;
March 2019.