RP3MES: A Key to Minimize Infection Spreading

Abstract

Healthcare facilities, especially in highly populated countries like India where patient to doctor ratio is very high, are under a huge burden. Thus, Remote Patient Physiological Parameter Monitoring using Embedded System (RP3MES) becomes essential to monitor a large number of people admitted in hospitals and also patients afflicted with infectious diseases. The design for RP3MES addresses the key issues of portability, cost-effectiveness, low power consumption, user-friendliness, high accuracy and remote communication to facilitate vital parameter(s), like heart rate and body temperature, measurements and emergency notification, keeping in mind, the health of the caregiver(s). ARM Cortex M3 embedded processor and low-cost sensors are used to achieve the cost-effectiveness and low power consumption. Alarming unit intimidates a remote caregiver regarding their patient’s health condition. The accuracy of the system measured data is 99.4% compared with the gold standard, which has been verified using Lin’s Concordance Correlation Coefficient and Bland–Altman analysis. A comparison of our system with other commercially available ones is also presented here. The proposed system has wireless connectivity which minimizes infection transmission among family members and caregivers of the patients. It may also reduce the burden on healthcare staffs in hospitals.