Muhammad Junaid Khan

Wireless Monitoring System for Heart Patients 1 2 3 M. Junaid Khan , Azhar Hussain , M. Farhan Khan # Electrical (Telecommunication) Engineering, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Park Road , Islamabad ,Pakistan 1 2 --3- Abstract— Health monitoring is a vital application of medical technology especially when it comes to the ability to do it wirelessly for any type of patients. S ince health care is of vital importance in society, this project is practically implemented using electronic circuits. The main purpose of the project is to give a better health care to people from the comfort of their own home in an economic and efficient manner. The need of “home based health monitoring system” is increased because in last few decades the cost of medical and health care has increased rapidly. In this project the health of a patient can be constantly monitored wirelessly and any irregularity in the health can be detected instantly through a warning message, without the need to stay close to the patient all the time. The temperature of the patient is measured by mean of various sensors placed on different areas of the patient’s body and the data is sent to the caretakers or doctor wirelessly using Wi-Fi module Esp8266 and displayed on a website. Real time monitoring is made possible using this method and in case of any emergency the doctors can also be contacted by sending an S MS alert [1]. Moreover, the previous record of the patient is also kept for assist in the diagnosis of a disease. between life and death. Studies show that patients who are discharged after recovering from heart failure are more likely to be re-admitted. Because of this, the hospital management needs to invest more money in order to accommodate the number of patients being admitted hence they have to manage the equipment and staff cost in the hospital and nursing houses which can be a difficult challenge. Hence we require a system in which the wellbeing of a patient is ensured and the hospitals are free from overcrowding. So the main objective here is to reduce the frequent visits of a patient to the hospital for regular check-ups that can easily be performed from the sanctity of their own home. So that the can avoid the inconvenience and waste of time. Therefore, the concept of “Home Based patient monitoring system” is proposed in this paper as shown in Fig.1. Keywords— Esp8266, Wi-Fi module, Wireless, Website I. Introduction Due the advancement in the field of medicine in the past century the life expectancy of an average human being has increased, because of which the ratio of elderly people in the population is increasing. But with their increase in age the elderly are also facing a variety of different diseases. For this home-care for elderly people is used where a doctor/nurse regularly visits the patient's house to perform regular check-ups. Also most old people suffering from illness are admitted in Hospitals or Sent to old age homes because of which the hospitals are overcrowded and the hospital beds are full to capacity, so if a patient is stable and doesn’t require any further assistance from a doctor the patient can be discharged and sent home. But there is still a chance that the patient may become ill again, and might even get infected by another disease; also there is the likelihood of a sudden attack that may turn out to be fatal. So most of the time, when a patient is released from hospital, the doctors advise them to take rest and that someone should accompany them for a period of time (Depending on the recovery). But due to the busy lifestyle of the modern era it is becoming a difficult task to constantly check on the patient’s comfort level and health monitoring while busy in other tasks. If a patient is diagnosed with conditions such as heart attack then he requires continuous monitoring after being sent from hospital to home. In these cases detection of potentially harmful disease before it can cause any fatal damage can prove to be the difference Figure 1: Proposed Health Monitoring System “Home Based patient monitoring system” is used as an alternative to regular check-ups of the patients at the Hospital so that patients suffering special medical conditions or the elderly who are fatigued to regularly visit a hospital can benefit from it. In the recent years due to progress in the field of “wireless technology” it is possible for doctor/caretakers to be updated about patient’s health and even the status of the surrounding environment constantly. In case of any anomalies a warning system is also designed to assist doctors/caretakers to be updated about their patient’s health. In these cases, our system can be quite handy . The prototype we have designed is a low cost wireless temperature sensor consisting of microcontroller based hardware with the capability to display data on a LCD screen attached to the device and the data is also constantly updated on a website. A SM S based alert system based on a GSM module integrated with the microcontroller is also used for warning the users in case of any emergency situation. [1] II. Description of the System The “Wireless Patient Monitoring S ystem” is divided into the following parts. [2][3] 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 1. Patient Health M onitoring Sensors Environment M onitoring Sensors M icro Controller Wi-Fi M odule Website for Displaying Health Parameters GSM M odule (SM S alert for Emergency) Patient Monitoring Sensors 1.1. Temperature Sensors Figure 3: Pulse Sensor and Filte r Circuit Temperature sensing is one of the important aspects in health monitoring. The first symptom that appears in case of most of the health issues is temperature abnormality. The signal coming from the pulse sensor is quite weak and noisy.[3] Hence we need an amplifier and filter circuits to boost and clean the signal, therefore we use LM 324 as a filter to remove the noise and then the signal is smoothened by passing it through a capacitor. The “M LX90614 is an Infra-Red thermometer” it is used for noncontact temperature measurements. It is equipped with both the “IR sensitive thermopile detector chip” and “the signal conditioning ASSP”. Because of its low noise amplifier, a 17-bit ADC and a strong DSP unit, the temperature can be recorded with a high accuracy. It is Small size, low cost, Easy to integrate and provides High precision non-contact temperature measurements for the Patients.[4] 2. Environment Monitoring Sensors The surrounding environment in which the patient is kept plays an important role on the health of the patient. If the surrounding is uncomfortable then the patient may feel discomfort and his health may start to decline. Hence in our project we try to tackle that part by keeping track of important factors which may impact the health status. Our Project includes the following environment sensors. 2.1. Room Temperature & Humidity Room temperature sensing is important in a way that if the temperature gets above or below the comfort level, it becomes unpleasant. Especially when we talk about a temperature sensitive patient it is importance to keep the temperature of his surroundings in normal range. A suggested typical range for summer is “23 °C (73 °F) to 25.5 °C (78 °F)”, and for winter being “20 °C (68 °F) to 23.5 °C (74 °F)”.[6] Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air. It indicates the likelihood of precipitation, dew, or fog. Patients become sensitive to humidity because their body uses evaporative cooling as the main mechanism to regulate its temperature. Some people experience difficulty breathing in humid environments. Some cases may possibly be related to respiratory conditions. Figure 2: MLX 90614. Hardware and Functional Diagram 1.2. Pulse Sensor A patient’s pulse rate can be calculated by change in the blood flow in the veins. In our system we have used an industrially manufactured Pulse sensor and cascaded it with another circuit as shown in Fig 3. The circuit is further amplifying and filtering the output from the pulse sensor to give a stable and accurate pulse count. The pulse sensor works by placing the finger on it or by latching it on the lower ear lobe. The light of the sensor passes through finger/ear and is reflected back. The intensity of light reflected back is then used to measure the pulse rate. With each pulse the signal that is reflected varies. This variation is converted to electrical form then the signal is amplified and the pulses are counted. In this system Room Temperature and Humidity is measured by DHT11. It ensures high reliability and excellent long term stability. This sensor comprises of a resistive type humidity measurement component and a NTC temperature measurement component, offering excellent quality, fast response, and cost effectiveness. Due to its small size and low power consumption it is a best choice for various applications. It operates at 5V, and measures the humidity in the range of 20-90% RH, and its humidity accuracy is ±5% RH. [2] Figure 4: DHT11 (Room Temperature & Humidity Sensor) 2.2. Air Quality Figure 6: Arduino Flame Sensor Cardiac patients require a clean environment for their recovery. So the air they breathe must be clean. If there is a harmful amount of a lethal gas in the air, it can cause fatal injury to the patients’ health. Hence it’s necessary that the quality of air may also be monitored.[7] 3. Microcontroller The “Arduino M ega 2560” is a microcontroller board based on “ATmega2560”. All the sensors used in the system are being controlled by this microcontroller. M Q135 gas sensor has high sensitivity to Ammonia, Sulfide and Benzene steam, also sensitive to smoke and other harmful gases. It is with low cost and suitable for different application. Figure 7: Microcontroller (Arduino Mega 2560) It has the following features:  Figure 5: MQ 135 (Air Q uality Sensor) Features:        Good sensitivity to Harmful gases in wide range High sensitivity to Ammonia, Sulfide and Benzene Long life and low cost Simple drive circuit It is equipped with everything needed to support the microcontroller; users can simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it up with a DC adapter or battery to get started. Application:    54 digital I/O pins (and from these 15 can be used for PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs. 16 M Hz crystal oscillator. USB connection and a power jack. ICSP header and a reset button. 4. Domestic air pollution detector Industrial air pollution detector Portable air pollution detector Wi-Fi Module The ESP8266 is a Wi-Fi module that has an independent SOC which is equipped with TCP/IP convention stack and it enables any microcontroller to send its data through Wi-Fi. ESP8266 can connect to any wireless modem and transmit data through it, provided its Username and Password are known thus this module enables us to upload the health status of the patient on a website. 2.3. Flame Sensor Fire hazards are getting common, in urban areas. They can be caused by even the slightest of carelessness. Careless smoking is the leading cause of residential fire deaths. Arson is the second largest cause of residential fires and residential fire deaths.[8] To avoid any risk of fire we have placed a fire sensor. This module possesses powerful ability of storing and processing which allows it to be connected with the sensors and other devices; it is made possible through its GPIOs[11] with minimal development required up-front and minimal loading required during runtime. These types of sensors are used for short range fire detection and can be used to monitor projects or as a safety precaution to cut devices off / on. The flame sensor is very sensitive to IR wavelength at 760 nm ~ 1100 nm light. Figure 8: Wi-Fi Module (ESP8266) [3] 5. III. Website Another feature that makes this project remote is its website data. The doctors can monitor the health status from anywhere. When the system is attached to a new patient, continuous monitoring will start, and the data will be uploaded on the website and saved as well so that it can be accessed later.[5] The patient’s information from the monitoring system goes to a modem linked to ESP 8266. Then from the modem it sent to the server to be stored on a computer and to be viewed on a website. In this project we have used PHP programming. The analog processing circuitry and the sensors were assembled as shown in Fig 11. The prototype was powered with a 5 V DC adapter, the wireless transmission is achieved using Wi-Fi module (ESP8266) and SM S alert is sent through GSM module. The sensors are providing accurate data ready for Display on local screen and Website. Overall the following system has been tested to operate successfully specific to our needs. Figure 9: GSM Module (SIM 900D) 6. Figure 11: Wireless Monitoring System (Prototype ) IV. GSM Module It’s impossible for doctors and caretakers to continuously stay logged on the website, and check the status of the patient so if an emergency situation arises the GSM M odule can be used to send an SM S to a registered cell phone. Conclusion Hospitals and nursing homes require a reliable wireless monitoring system to observe real time physiological signals from patients with high reliability and accuracy. In this paper a monitoring system for heart patients through wireless monitoring was presented. We have used it to sense the temperature and pulse of humans and then send the data using ESP8266 and GSM . This system reduce the medical expenses of the patient by providing real-time monitoring within the comforts of their own home, eliminating the need for admitting the patient in expensive facilities for observation, and reducing the need for transportation of patients to hospitals. Global system for mobile communication is an internationally accepted standard for digital cellular communication[11]. GSM module is used to create a communication setup between a Processor and a GSM system. GSM module has a GSM modem, fitted with power supply circuit and communication interfaces (for e.g. RS-232, USB, etc.) for computer. It requires a SIM (Subscriber Identity M odule) card just like a cell phones so that the communication with the network is made possible. Same as cell phones they have IM EI (International M obile Equipment Identity) number for their identification. A GSM module can perform the following operations:    Results and Discussion V. Future Scope The Current available systems for monitoring is subjected to technical limitations due to cost, resource and time availability, resulting in the under exportation of potentially life-saving device. If these limitations can be removed then by the use of low power consuming, battery powered wireless sensors, then the system can offer patient’s to move freely as the please which is not possible while using wired sensors, thus making the system truly portable. M ore sensors can also be added to this general system if required by the patient. Receive, make or reject a voice call. Send, receive or delete SM S messages in a SIM . Add, read and search phonebook entries of the SIM . REFERENCES [1] Figure 10: GSM Module (SIM 900D) [4] Ovidiu Apostu, Bogdan Hagiu, Sever Paşca, Wireless ECG M onitoring and Alarm System Using ZigBee”2011 The International Symposium on ADVANCED TOPIC INELECTRICAL ENGINEERING-/ATEE 2011. [2] Kenneth J. Ayala, The 8051 M icrocontroller ARCHITECTURE, PROGRAM M ING and APPLICATIONS, WEST PUBLISHING COM PANY, Page:131-197. [3] M ichael J. Pont, Embedded C, Edition 2002, Addison Wesley, Page: 57-87,217. [4] Single and Dual Zone Infra-Red Thermometer in TO-39 [5] Dave Grundgeiger, Programming Visual Basic.Net, First Edition 2002, O’Reilly Publication, ISBN:-, 464 Pages. [6] The American Heritage Dictionary Language (5th ed.). 2014. of the English [7] "Air Quality Index - American Lung Association". American Lung Association. 20 August 2015. [8] "Fire Safety". Fire Protection Specialists. 17 January 2014 [9] "Using AVR Studio for Arduino Engblaze.com. 18 January 2013. development". [10] "2ADUIESP-12 by Shenzhen Anxinke technology co., LTD for WIFI M odule". FCC. December 30, 2014. [11] Anton A. Huurdeman, The Worldwide History of Telecommunications, John Wiley & Sons, 31 juli 2003, page 529 [5]