IoT Augmented Health Monitoring System

A. Nishitha Reddy1, Achsah Mary Marks2, S.R.S Prabaharan*3, S.Muthulakshmi4

Embedded Systems Programme
School of Electronics Engineering
VIT University, Chennai
nishita3reddy@gmail.com1, achsahmary94@gmail.com2, prabaharan.srs@vit.ac.in3, muthulakshmi.s@vit.ac.in4
Corresponding author: phone: +919841174150

Abstract— Objectives: Post hospitalization care of a any critical variation in health is being found call can be
patient treated for critical illness, for instance cardiac arrest forwarded to the emergency number.
has been regarded as imperative. Nevertheless, it has become
inevitable to skip follow-ups by the patients themselves. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Method: This paper aims at designing a system which
continuously monitors the health of the patient despite the
Systems developed using RFID technology uses RFID
patient being busy with his routine.An application is tag1 .RFID wearable tags sensors are put in contact with
developed on android platform combined with Internet of the body and RFID tags take data from the tag. The
Things (IoT) and sensor devices. Health of patient will be maximum distance that can be with RFID transmitter is 5-
monitored by sensors and data from sensors will be sent to 6m. The disadvantage is that patient can be tracked only
cloud which can be accessed anytime by the doctor and/or inside the room. Radio emission from the readers can also
caretaker both in the cloud and application for necessary affect the health of the patient under post medical care.
follow-ups in real time. Remote monitoring system developed collects
Findings: In order to find the health of a patient more
physiological data of the patient using sensor chips and
parameters are needed .But the main parameter for
identifying the health of a patient are heart rate and
automatically generate the medical records2. In the present
temperatures. More parameters can be added to the system system, different health parameters sensors are used
developed. instead of tags which will not affect health of patient.
Improvements/Applications: More sensors can be added
to the system and the system has many application scenarios 3. PROPOSED WORK
such as family health care. Various health parameters of a patient can be be
monitored .Two of the most critical parameters are
Keywords: Health monitoring, sensors, IOT, Android temperature and pulse rate which can determine sudden
application.
changes of the patient health. The sensors are connected
to raspberry pi and data from sensors are sent to cloud.
1. INTRODUCTION Also an android application is developed which displays
the health parameters. The block diagram of overall
Health should be given prior importance in a
system is depicted in fig. 1.
person’slife. Healthy population leads to economic
progress, live long and are more productive. Many health
monitoring systems has been developed in these few years
that can increase the quality of life by providing better
health. Health of patients who are discharged from
hospital after treatment is to be monitored frequently
.Patient may get discharged from hospital, but there are
chances of disease get return, or may get affected with a
new disease. Such patients need a caretaker always with
them to monitor whether there is any variation in any of
the health parameters. This project targets at continuous
monitoring of different health parameters of a patient by
using a health monitoring system that can avoid a
caretaker and thus improve the quality of life. Various
sensors are used to measure the health parameters and the
data from the sensors is sent to cloud which helps in
remote monitoring. A doctor or a person who has to know
about the health of the patient can access this data from 
any faraway place from the cloud or mobile app and if Fig 1: Block diagram of the overall system

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c IEEE 251
 4. SYSTEM DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION
In this project raspberry pi is used which acts as a
control unit. Raspberry pi is a credit card sized board
which uses ARM 11processor of 700MHz. So the first
step was installation of raspbian OS, which is a free
operating system for raspberry pi hardware.
For sensing body temperature DS18B20 is used which
is a digital temperature sensor which measure temperature
from -550C to +1250C. Sensor is interfaced with raspberry
pi and temperature is measured continuously. Terminal
window with temperature readings is shown in Fig 2.
Pulse rate sensor SEN-11574 is interfaced to raspberry
pi using external ADC MCP3008 since raspberry does not
have an in-built ADC. The pulse rate is monitored
continuously. Then measured values are sent to cloud
(thingspeak) to continuously monitor (fig 5). The cloud to
which the data is sent is Thingspeak, which is an open
source platform for internet of things. Storing the data in
cloud increases reliability, ie data can be accessedfrom
anywhere. A doctor or caretaker can view the data
that is being sent and if there is any variation they can
take appropriate measures like call an ambulance or sent a
message so that the patient is saved. Body temperature of
two different persons was measured and sent to cloud
(Figs. 3 & 4).


Fig 2: Temperature readings from Ds18b20


Fig 3: Body temperature of person 1


Fig 4: Body temperature of person 2

252 2017 International Conference on Nextgen Electronic Technologies

 
Fig 5: Pulse rate of person

Android app is developed using and data from cloud

can be monitored on app ( fig 6). Monitoring the data
using an android app is more convenient for all. So the
data that is being sent to cloud can be viewed through this
app that is being developed (fig 7). In case of any
emergency call for help in the app calls to emergency
number. There is also an option to send text message
which sends the message “patient is not well, need help”
to the doctor.

Fig 7: Data viewed on smart phone

 patient like blood pressure, ECG etc. of the patient can be
Fig 6: Android app developed
5. CONCLUSION
This system provides continuous monitoring of patient
after discharge from hospital. In the system implemented
mainly two parameters body temperature and pulse rate
are measured and data from sensor is sent to cloud and an
android app is developed and data from cloud can be
monitored in the mobile app. More parameters of the
integrated to the circuit. Further work is underway to
analyze the data at cloud and accordingly the message has
to be sent to a caretaker or doctor in case of emergency.
Also the whole system can be integrated as a wearable
device which increases flexibility of the system.

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 7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are indebted to the school of electronics
engineering, VIT Chennai Campus for the opportunities
and facilities provided for executing the project.
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254 2017 International Conference on Nextgen Electronic Technologies