AITS students design advanced home healthcare system

The electronics technology has entered almost all aspects of day-to-day life, and the medical field is not an exception to that. The need for well-equipped hospitals and diagnostic centers is increasing day by day as the people are becoming more conscious about their health.

In biomedical field, special units such as intensive care unit or coronary care unit are designed to offer the advantage of the low nurse-patient ratio and concentration of the equipment and the resources needed; to take care of critically ill or seriously injured patients.

The medical world today faces two basic problems when it comes to patient monitoring-firstly the need of healthcare providers the patient’s bedside and secondly the patient’s restriction to the bed. In order to achieve better quality patient care, the above cited problems have to be solved. As the technologies are advancing, it has become feasible to design the home based vital sign monitoring system to display, record and transmit signals from human body to any other location. +

The emergence of internet technologies and telemedicine opens new scales and makes new demands on patient monitoring. One of the most recent challenges in the field of biomedical engineering is critical care units which play a vital role in human being’s life in providing accurate diagnostic information. Certainly patient health requires a continuous display and interpretation of the patient’s vital functions.

The patient monitoring information still required a standardised interaction with present growing technology as it focuses on the scientific needs. The monitoring devices offer faster, more effective and cost-saving rehabilitation and mobilization of patients in helping radiologist for providing therapeutic treatment. The work developed involves various applications such as neuron-muscular stimulator stimulates the nerves (neurons) of the part of the body to which the electrodes are attached they constantly monitor the heart rate, identify the motion of the body, display blood pressure digitally.

The first application provides relief from headache, muscular pain, or fatigue (due to exertion of muscles) and also revives the frozen muscle which impairs movement. Second application is one type of sensor which monitors the heart beat pulses for every minute. It will check the heart beat pulses and the same data will be given to the microcontroller.

This heart beat sensor is designed to a give digital output of the heart beat when a finger is placed inside it. This digital output can be connected to microcontroller directly to measure the beats per minute (BPM) rate. It works on the principle of light modulation by blood flow through finger at each pulse. The third application is where the MEMS sensor finds out the direction of tilting. But during medical emergency, there may be absence of qualified personnel.

To deal with such situations, a monitoring device is designed to help the patient’s condition and restore his health. Lastly, a real time monitoring system is usually built for a patient to monitor the transmission of the systolic and diastolic pressure values to a remote computer as the above applications have a significant link with blood pressure of human body.

In this fast changing world, human being is suffering from various problems. To relieve himself from the pain, he consumes tablets which can affect his kidneys. In order to overcome this situation, a novel prototype known as “microcontroller based advanced home care system for patients” has been proposed.

The model was designed under the supervision and support of Asif Hussain, Associate Professor, Annmacharya Institue of Technology and Sciences (AITS), Rajampet along with a dedicated team of AITS ECE students Sree Vidya, Venkata Nikhila, Sudhakar, Sujan Kumar and Subramanyam. The prototype has four modules- the neuron muscular sensor, the heartbeat measurement device, blood pressure monitoring device, and patient positioning device.

Neuron muscular sensor can be used for people suffering from epilepsy, fatigue, coma, mental retardation, sleeping or restless problems etc. A shock can be used to contract the muscles and relax them. The heartbeat can be measured using light modulation technology used to count heart pulse. By means of a pad connected to the left hand ,one can measure the blood pressure digitally and this information is displayed and can be passed through GSM technology.

The MEMS sensor can be used to give the positioning of the patient during coma or epilepsy or other diseases. This prototype is useful for people suffering from epilepsy, coma and other mental retarded diseases. This information can be sent directly through GSM technology to the people who are miles away.