A Holistic Approach For Patient Health Care Monitoring System
Through IoT
Dr. Suvarna Nandyal
HOD Computer Science & Engineering Department
PDA Engineering College
Kalaburagi, India
suvarna_nandyal@yahoo.com
Abstract— Health care is the most important aspect of any society
and is fundamental need for every citizen of every country. However,
most developing countries face lack of proper health care resources to
cater to the needs of every citizen. In critical cases, the patients have
to be continuously monitored for their bio-parameters and immediate
response from doctors is essential. So, it is most essential to improve
the healthcare infrastructure. The emerging trend in healthcare sector
is to change the existing healthcare services and change the routine
medical check-ups from hospital centric to person centric. Here, A
Holistic Approach for the Development of Real Time Patient Health
Monitoring and Alerting through IOT is proposed and implemented
using ThingSpeak site as the cloud. This work presents the design and
construction of a working prototype for smart health care system
using Internet of Things which can provide Quality Health Care to
everyone. In this system, the prototype developed uses an embedded
system built using Atmega328 microcontroller and it is programmed
using Arduino IDE. The prototype gathers biomedical and orientation
information from sensors and location information from GPS of the
monitored person and convey them to healthcare cloud system
utilizing IOT platform. The sensor data is sent to the network through
Wi-Fi link. The Thingspeak channel is updated at regular intervals
and helps to maintain the medical history of the patient. The
Thingspeak cloud computing handles authentication, privateness,
safety, and data management and provides accessibility. The system
obtains the parameter valus and compares them with the standard
values and in the case of an emergency, a local alarm is triggered and
an SMS text message is sent to the doctor with the details of
authentication. The data from cloud platform can be accessed by the
concerned doctor anytime, after a proper authentication and diagnosis
and decisions can be made. The data can be accessed only by the
authorized user (doctor) through password authentication.
Keywords— Internet of Things, Arduino UNO, Blood pressure,
Temparature.
I INTRODUCTION
Good health is very important to human happiness
and well-being. A healthy populations plays an important role
in contributing the economic progress. Healthy populations
can reduce economical burden to the governments and reduce
pressure overloaded hospitals, clinics and medical
professionals and reduce stress on the public safety charities,
networks and governmental or non-governmental centers. The
978-1-5386-5657-0/18/$31.00 2018
c IEEE
Aishwarya R Gada
Computer Science & Engineering Department
PDA Engineering College
Karnataka, India
aishwaryagada@gmail.com
modern healthcare system is necessary to keep people
effective and healthy,. Many patients especially in rural areas,
where there are no fundamental access to health care needs are
on the brink of deteriorating their health due to undiagnosed
and unmonitored prolonged fever, high blood pressure level,
fluctuations in pulse rate by an expert doctor. A healthcare
system should provide for the better healthcare services to all
people at any time anywhere in an low-cost and patient
friendly manner.
Technology can play a important role in healthcare
not only for sensing devices but also for communicating the
device, recording and a displaying the devices. It also become
very important to record various health parameters and post
operational days. Hence IOT is adapted as the latest trend in
Healthcare communication method. There is a need for using
the Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as smart phones,
sensors etc., to trigger a significant improvement in health care
in clinical settings and out of them.
.
II. RELATED WORK
Jaiee Sitaram Adivarekar et.al. [1] according to this author in
this high-speed race of life, it is very difficult to constantly
monitor the patient's body parameter such as sugar level, heart
rate, temparature and so on when the near ones are not
constantly available while the patient is suffeing from a
disease. Hence to minimize the patient's burden of monitoring
from the hospital or from the doctor's head, this work have
presented the methodology for checking patient's remotely by
the use of GSM network and technology called Very Large
Scale Integration (VLSI). This patient monitoring system
records physical characteristics either by regular intervals of
time or by continuously.
Mrs. Sonal Chakole et.al. [2] have proposed the work
were it mainly focuses on designing Health monitoring System
by the use of sensor so that the people get healthcare services
without geting into hospital beds with constant monitoring and
sensors placed in certain way. the system uses wearable
sensors that no longer assistant doctor or nurse will be
required. the aim of the system is to provide early warning of
patients situations. There are many diffrent type of sensors that
68
can be used in the remote areas such as broader region, people
in rural area or people leaving in isolated area.
T.Thanya et.al. [7] have developed a web based
application which is uded to continuously monitor the patient
and look after some of the health parameters like
electrocardiogram, Blood pressure and Heart Rate of the
patient who are living in the remote area were the responsibilty
is given to the single doctor which becomes difficult for a
doctor to monitor many patient's. The main aim is to inform
the health condition to the doctor who is incharged. All the
sensors take the value and sends the data to the doctor so that
the doctor can give the basic treatment conclusion that can
help the health facilities of the people living in remote area.
In this work Sachchidanand Jha et.al. [5] monitor the
human health in real-time and alarm the change in human
body for patient health specially for those who are suffering
from diseases. The Embedded system which have a Embedded
ARM microcontroller is connected to a sensors and GSM Figure 1. Proposed Health Care System Architecture
module, the system checks the patients health by the medical
signals if any abnormalities are found, to transfer the signals to A. Arduino UNO
the medical center the system uses the patient’s phone , were
the doctor draws the conclusion for the signals that have Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board construted on
the ATmega328P. Arduino is also an open source tool that
received and sends the medical advice to the patient so that
helps computer to sense and command the physical world than
his/her life is saved. The work is a open source platform and
the desktop computer. Arduino Uno microcontroller have
the components simulation is done using Proteus 8 software.
In this work Nithi Pillai et.al. [3] have focused on the fourteen digital input/output pins out of which six can be used
patients in the remote area handed by a single doctor were it as Pulse Width Modulation outputs, six analog inputs, 16MHz
becomes difficult for a single doctor to monitor large number ceramic resonator, a USB connection, a power jack, and
microcontroller also has a reset button. Arduino UNO board is
of patients. Hence a web based application is developed to
connected to sensors for scanning, the ADC (analog-to-digital
monitor continuously and look after the parameters like BP,
converter) will convert the respective readings of the sensor
Heart Rare and ECG. The sensors senses the patients and
obtains the value which are sent to the internet and then to the value to its digital value.
doctor receives the message so that doctor can advice
accordingly. B. Body Temperature sensor
A Temperature Sensor is a device that measures body
III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE temperature. The sensor used to measure body temperature is
LM35 sensor that can be used to measure temperature with an
The executed system architecture is shown in the electrical output which is proportional to the temperature (in
Figure 1. The system is composed of an Atmega AVR °C). The LM35 sensor ranges from - 55°C to 150°C. Feeling
microcontroller (ATmega328) as a central processing unit for of cold is cause by the increase in a set-point later causes
the entire system and microcontroller is connected with all the muscle contraction. When the set-point temperature comes
sensor and devices. By the help of microcontroller sensors can back to normal, a person’s body feels hot, were person may
be operated to redeem the data and the data redeemed is begin to sweat. Fevers do not generally exceeds more than 41
examined with the sensor data and updates it to the cloud to 42 °C (105.8 to 107.6 °F). The analog output from LM35 is
using Wi-Fi module connected to it. connected to Arduino analog pin A1.

C. MEMS Accelerometer Sensor

MEMS Accelerometer sensor is a sensor which is used to
derive body posture. The sensor is used to sense fall of the
patient. A MEMS based accelerometer is an electromechanical
device that will evaluate acceleration forces. The analog
output from MEMS is connected to Arduino analog pin A0.
D. LCD Display
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) modules is used to
customize the output to display characters such as numbers
and text. A 16x2 LCD is used which means it can display 16

Second International Conference on Green Computing and Internet of Things (ICGCIoT) 69

characters per line and there are only 2 such lines. The LCD
used in this can display 5x7 pixel matrix per character.
E. GPS Receiver Sensor
Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of satellites
that is used to transmit the information, due to which it is
possible to exactly identify the locations of the person on earth
by measuring distance from the satellites. The exact location
information is then sent to the microcontroller.
F. GSM Modem
GSM Module (SIM900A): This is a simple Arduino GSM
and GPRS module. We use the module SIMCom SIM900A. It
can also be used for making calls or receive text messages.
Here the Global System for Mobile is used to send the
message to the doctor if any abnormalities.
G. Wi-Fi Module
The Wi-Fi used in this project is ESP8266 Wi-Fi module
which has TCP/IP protocol stack integrated already on the
chip. So that it becomes easy for any microcontroller to get
connected with Wi-Fi network. ESP8266 is a preprogrammed
and a powerful enough for storage interface. Through UART
interface microcontroller have to communicate. It runs with a
supply voltage of 3.3v.
H. Thing Speak
ThingSpeak is an platform service that allows total, envision
and study the live data which are updated in the cloud. “Thing
Speak” is an open source Internet of Things (IOT) application
that allows to collect the data and store the data in the cloud.
Sensor logging applications, place tracking applications can be
created using ThingSpeak .
I. Buzzer Alarm Unit
Whenever the present values of any of these biomedical
parameters deviate too much from their normal values, the
embedded microcontroller senses it and produces alarm sound.
Thus it can assist the elderly or handicapped people.
Microcontroller sends TTL level signals, a logic ‘1’ to turn the
buzzer on and a logic ‘0’ to turn the buzzer off.
IV. METHODOLOGY
This system provides less problem, less power consumptions
and highly compact for health care monitoring of patients.
Expensive facilities can be eliminated if needed. Using
proposed system which is shown in the Figure 2, we can
monitor critical health parameters from anywhere on the earth
with the availability of internet. The system supports
physiological monitoring of blood pressure, heart rate, body
temperature and orientation to determine falls. The sensors are
then racially mixed into a wearable device that can be used to
70 Second International Conference on Green Computing and Internet of Things (ICGCIoT)
monitor the health and wellness of various patient. Data
collected by the sensors are sent wirelessly to a cloud platform
for storage and visualization. The system continuously
measures these parameters and displays them on a local LCD
panel and also uploads them into Thingspeak cloud platform.
Using a Wi-Fi connection. It also compares these parameters
with their preset minimum and maximum values stored in the
system’s memory. It continues to monitor the parameters
periodically, unless an abnormality is found in the parameters.
in the event of abnormality, it sounds a local alarm to alert the
people around and a txt SMS message is sent to the doctor
with the patient details and authentication to cloud database.
Doctor can easily retrieve the patient’s data information at
anywhere from the cloud server and can have the access of
retrieve the patient’s medical history, when any such further
consultancy happens with the doctor.
Figure 2. Prototype Model
V. TEST RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A framework model has been constructed the system collect
the parameter values and compared with their standard set
point values (standard set point values are heart rate is in the
scope of 60 to 85 itself, systole pressure value from 70 to 130,
diastole pressure value from 70 being minimum to 90 being
maximum and temperature 40°C is maximum) if the value
exceed the standard set point the alert message is sent through
GSM . As shown in the figure.3, message sent includes
patients ID, AuthKey , values of Systole, Diastole pressures,
heart rate and temperature along with the accurate location
with Longitude-Latitude to the doctor. With the patients id
doctor can view the patients history in the ThingView app
shown in the figure 4&5. The test on ten different patient has
been taken and all the parameter values of the individual
patient is shown in the Table 1, the message is sent through
GSM Module to doctor if any abnormalities in any of the
parameters tested. As shown in the figure.6, patients P4, P6
and P8 are abnormal were the patient P4 is suffering from high
blood pressure with 137 systolic and 74 diastolic blood
pressure and the patient P6 is suffering from bradycardia i,e
slower than expected heart rate, generally beating fewer than
60 beats per minute and the patient P8 is suffering from fever
with the temperature of 42°C. The other patients
P1,P2,P3,P5,P7,P9 and P10 are normal .

x Normal pulse rate is 60 to 100 per minute

Bradycardia – pulse rate is less than 60 per minute
Tachycardia - pulse rate is grater than 100 per minute

x Normal Blood Pressure

Systolic = 100 to 140 mm Hg
Diastolic = 60 to 90 mm Hg

Figure 5: Graph of a particular patient`s

bio-parametric value

Table 1 Parametric values of all the 10 patients

Heart Systolic Diastolic Body
Rate Temperature
P1 70 110 72 30
P2 78 129 74 26
P3 80 125 74 26
P4 75 137 74 26
P5 66 121 88 32
Figure 3: GPS based patients location and patients ID
P6 58 107 76 30
P7 79 124 113 30
P8 60 114 76 42
P9 76 118 90 26
P10 65 104 70 32

Figure 4: Graph of a particular patient`s

bio-parametric values
Figure 6. Graph that represents all the individual patients parametric value

Second International Conference on Green Computing and Internet of Things (ICGCIoT) 71

Conclusion
The primary aim of this project work was to develop
an IOT based patient’s multiple bio-parameters monitoring
and emergency alerting and location tracking system. It used
the most modern techniques and tools to achieve the
objectives. It used temperature sensor for measuring the body
temperature, MEMS accelerometer for determining fall of the
patient and potentiometers to enter the values of Systole,
Diastole pressures and Heart rates. This system collected those
parameter values and compared with their standard set point
values and displayed them on LCD display and sent those
values to ThingSpeak cloud server for storage and
visualization. If any deviation from the standard values were
found, it sends an alert SMS to the doctor using GSM Modem.
It inserts values of all parameters, location information and the
ID and password to log in to Thingspeak cloud. It collects the
location information through GPS receiver and uses Wi-Fi
Modem to connect to Wi-Fi network or a hotspot. By
combining GPS and GSM with body smart sensor can help to
communicate the medical emergencies and track the location
of impact. Doctors can monitor and identify the patient’s
condition continuously and could suggest earlier precaution
for the patients themselves.
It was implemented by designing the hardware part
first and then the software part. It was rigorously tested for its
proper operation and reliability. This system detected bio-
parameter abnormalities accurately. The proposed system is
cost effective and user friendly and thus its usage is not
restricted or limited to any class of users. It is a very efficient
system and very easy to handle and thus provides great
flexibility and serves as a great improvement over other
conventional monitoring and alert systems. Here wearable
sensor system act as a good use to monitor elderly, epileptic
and mentally diseased people.
72 Second International Conference on Green Computing and Internet of Things (ICGCIoT)
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