Geriatric Assistive Device for Remote Health

Monitoring using IoT based Caplet System

Pavithra. T
Dept. of Medical Electronics
Saveetha Engineering College
Chennai, India
pavithrathiru@gmail.com
Rajalakshmi. M
Dept. of Medical Electronics
Saveetha Engineering College
Chennai, India
rajeeabi2000@gmail.com
Vasanth Kumar. K
Dept. of Medical Electronics
Saveetha Engineering College
Chennai, India
vasanthvictor333@gmail.com
Srinivasan. T
Dept. of Medical Electronics
Saveetha Engineering College
Chennai, India
srinivasan712002@gmail.com

Mukesh Balaji. E Kanchana Devanathan

Dept. of Medical Electronics
Saveetha Engineering College
Chennai, India
mukeshbalajimme10@gmail.com
Abstract— In this work, an attempt has been made to develop
an IoT based caplet system for the elderly persons who suffer from
Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and chronic illness. The aim of this
work is to monitor the elderly persons through a monitoring
system which observes the body signals along with the medication
time and interval. Physiological parameters like temperature,
2022 IEEE Delhi Section Conference (DELCON) | 978-1-6654-5883-2/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/DELCON54057.2022.9752851
Dept. of Medical Electronics
Saveetha Engineering College
Chennai, India
kanchanad@saveetha.ac.in
population with dementia need a simple and cost effective
system to monitor their health and medication intervals [4, 5].
In general home care, the clinicians rely on the family members
and the caregivers to observe the patients with dementia [6].
The elderly population has to consume medicines and drugs

heart rate and SpO2 are measured with the help of this system.
Since the body temperature is a variable parameter for elderly
persons, a sudden decrease or increase in the temperature leads to
heat stroke and several health issues. Low or high heart rate is the
risk factor for the aged persons leading to increase the death rate.
Likewise, abnormal SpO2 is correlated with cardiovascular and
cerebrovascular degeneration. So, in order to regulate all these
three physiological parameters and also tracking the medication,
this caplet system has been developed. With the help of various
sensors, the signals from the body are taken for processing and
analysis. The recorded data is stored in cloud and personalized
alerts are produced for each individual. In case of abnormal
signals, delay or lack of medication, the system produces an alert
to the caretaker with the help of display unit and buzzer. Results
indicate that any abnormal physiological activity or due in
medication is identified by the system. Thus, this proposed system
is found to be effective in terms of vital parameter monitoring
along with medication reminder thereby enhancing the geriatric
home care.
Keywords— Alzheimer’s disease, caplet, cloud,
physiological, SpO2, heart rate, dementia, chronic illness
I. INTRODUCTION
Geriatrics refers to the science of caring for the elderly
population. According to the World Health Organization
(WHO), there will be a drastic increase of about 26% in the
population of people over the age of 80 by 2050 [1]. Dementia
is a medical condition wherein the person experiences severe
cognitive and emotional losses leading to disturbances in day-
to-day activities [2]. With the increase in the aging population,
dementia is becoming a crucial challenge in public and home
healthcare sectors [3].
Around 60% of the elderly population affected with
dementia stay at home and they are in the need of appropriate
healthcare and management [3]. Though lot of home caring
solutions are available in the market, there seems to be lack of
effectiveness in terms of cost and simplicity. The geriatric
at regular intervals to maintain their health in stable condition
[7, 8]. Due to dementia, they fail to take proper medication on
time [9, 10]. Therefore a smart monitoring system is required
to remind them to take medicines at the prescribed time
intervals [11, 12]. In some severe cases of chronic illness, there
might be sudden decrease in heart rate and other physiological
signals like blood pressure and temperature. Hence it is
important to monitor the vital body parameters of the elderly
people [13, 14].
Home based remote health monitoring could help clinicians
to monitor elderly population thereby following hospital at
home model and it has been found to be effective especially
during the recent pandemic period [15]. User Centric Design
(UCD) of geriatric assist devices is an iterative process which
takes into account factors such as user demand, context, testing
and development [16]. Accurate monitoring of geriatric health
is required to for precise assessment of sedentary behavior
IoT, thereby reducing the health risks [17].
Wearable devices integrated with Internet of Things (IoT)
can be worn by elderly people to monitor their physical
activities as well as physiological parameters. Various
researchers have explored IoT based wearable devices in
geriatric healthcare [18]. Pillai et al., have proposed a Hidden
Markov Model based energy conservation approach for
monitoring physiological parameters in geriatric healthcare
applications [19]. Tele geriatric services have multiple benefits
such as enhanced quality of healthcare, cost effective services,
increased access to specialist care and improvement in the
nursing skills [20].
The proposed system is an attempt to overcome the
challenges in the existing solutions and develop a cost effective
IoT based caplet system to assist the elderly population. The
caplet system consists of hardware and software modules. The
hardware and software are integrated with a cloud platform.
The system sends alerts to the mobile phone of the caregiver in

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case the person missed medication or in case of any
abnormalities in vital parameters.
II. METHODOLOGY
The block diagram of the proposed system is shown in Fig.
1. The caplet system consists of three units: sensor unit, capsule
unit and the controller unit. The sensor unit consists of
temperature sensor, heart beat sensor, SpO2 sensor. The
temperature sensor measures the body temperature, heart beat
sensor measures the heart rate per minute and the SpO2 sensor
measures the percentage of the oxygen level saturation in the
blood. The capsule unit consist of Infrared (IR) sensor and Light
Emitting Diode (LED) to monitor the medication intervals.

Fig. 3. Flow diagram of the system design

Node MCU ESP8266 utilized in this study could be used as

a standalone network connected device via reprogramming.
Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) serial
connection could make an existing microcontroller with
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed Caplet system additional Wi-Fi module. The LCD display used in this study is
The signals from the sensor and capsule unit are fed to the 16 × 2 intelligent alphanumeric dot matrix is capable of
Arduino Microcontroller, which display the output in the Liquid displaying 224 different characters and symbols. The display
Crystal Display (LCD) and produces alert via buzzer in case of unit with parameters and the capsule unit are shown in the Fig.
abnormal conditions. The power supply for the caplet system 4 and Fig. 5 respectively.
and node MCU is connected to the Arduino Microcontroller. In
this study, Node MCU is used since it is cost effective and could
be used to record the data in the cloud. The physiological signals
collected from the sensor unit and the medication intervals are
fed into the Internet of Things (IoT) cloud platform which can
be viewed in mobile/PC. The developed caplet system is shown
in the Fig. 2.
Fig. 4. Display Unit

Fig. 2. Developed Caplet System Hardware

The two major components of this caplet system are Arduino

Uno and Node MCU. In this study, Arduino UNO with
ATmega328P chip is used as control unit to interface between
the sensors and the alert unit. It has power jack, USB, In-circuit
Serial Programming (ICSP) header, reset button along with 14
I/O pins. The flow diagram of the system design is shown in the
Fig. 3.
Fig. 5. Capsule Unit with integrated sensors
To control the caplet system, the user needs to input the
medical details and when to take them. As there are three
compartments so the user can keep almost three types of
medicine according to doctor’s supervision. The medication

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time or alarm tone is pre-set in the code. If the patient doesn’t contains a username and password option. After logging in to
take medicine or misses any notification, then the light of the sever with username and password the doctor, patient,
compartment will glow. After taking the medicine from the caretakers can access their pages and find information related
compartment the LED will turn off. to medication. After login with the username and password,
Measuring the patient’s body temperature, heart beat and data log sheets will appear as shown in Fig. 7.
SpO2 and storing all this measured data for the doctor’s
observation is another feature of this system. A temperature
sensor, heart beat and SpO2 sensors are integrated with the
cloud. These measured physiological parameters are stored in
the server. The normal and abnormal values for temperature,
heart rate and SpO2 of a healthy adult is given in the Table I.
When the values observed from the caplet system are above or
below the threshold value preset in the Arduino, it sends alert
notification. Also, when the medication is not taken by patient,
alarm is triggered and notification is sent to the caretaker.

TABLE I. NORMAL AND ABNORMAL VALUES OF VITAL PARAMETERS

Parameter Condition
Fig. 7. Data log of the vital parameters
Normal: 36 - 37.5 ◦C
Temperature Hypothermia: < 35 ◦C This data log contain the information of the all the above
(◦C) Hyperthermia: > 37.5 ◦C measured signal and tracking of medication. It appears like,
Hyperpyrexia: > 40 ◦C when the capsule is missed in the morning it shows that morning
Normal: 60-100 bpm pill missed and vice versa. Then the measured physiological
Heart Rate
Bradycardia: <60 bpm signals are displayed as Temp030_HB070_PX096 in the
(bpm) webpage. Similarly, the patient date is stored continuously in the
Tachycardia: > 100 bpm
Normal: 95 %
cloud using the IoT based caplet system which can be assessed
Mild Hypoxia: 90 %
by the clinicians.
SpO2 (%)
Moderate to Severe Hypoxia: 85 % III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Life-threatening Hypoxia: 80 %
The data obtained for a subject using this IoT based caplet
From the server, the clinician can obtain information from a system is shown in the Table II. The temperature, heart rate and
patient’s body temperature, heartbeat, SpO2. The patient has to oxygen saturation are measured during the time of medication.
place the sensor in his hand for 60 seconds for the sensor to read Once the person consumes the pill, it sends notification that the
data. After 60 seconds the extracted data will be sent to the medicine has been taken at the prescribed time and produces an
server to help the doctor to monitor the patient remotely. Fig. 6 alert if it is missed.
shows the home page of the website for IoT based caplet system.
A webpage with cloud storage has been created to store all kinds TABLE II. DATA OBTAINED USING THE CAPLET SYSTEM
of information about patient, medication time data, body Heart
temperature, SpO2 and heart rate data. A PC/Mobile phone is Temperature SpO2
Time Rate Medication
used as a server for IoT modem. (◦C) (%)
(bpm)
10:00 am - - - Missed

02:00 pm 33 70 98 Taken

06:00 pm 31 69 97 Taken

Table III shows the comparison of the proposed system with

Fig. 6. Login page of the website
All information including patient name, medication time,
data, temperature, heartbeat, SpO2 data are shown on the
website through IOT modem. By clicking on these page, both
doctor, patient and caretaker will find their log in page which
the existing literature. Siegemund et al., have utilized Radio-
Frequency Identification (RFID) tags along with Bluetooth
module to remind persons to take pills using a mobile phone.
The system also enable remote interaction with other users [13].
Huang et al., have proposed a system using big data analytics
for monitoring pill intake in elderly population. The system has
the advantage of providing empathy along with medication
tracking [14].
Huang et al., have demonstrated a smart pill box system
using ZigBee module with Arduino board. The system enables
remotes monitoring along with skype video conferencing

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system [9]. Li et al., have used RFID tags to remind the elderly
people to take medications on time. The system makes note of
the time at which the person takes the pill from the box [10].
Wu et al., have used a medicine bag and utilized matrix
barcodes with information about the prescription and patient
history. The camera installed on the pillbox reads the barcode
and reminds the aged people for medication [6].
Othman et al., have proposed a system which uses
Raspberry Pi module and Arduino board. The system has the
advantage of alarm function and popup notification in the
smartphone [7]. Tsai et al., have developed a system which can
track the medication intervals of the elderly people. The system
has been developed with voice reminder along with alarm
system [8].
in case of medical emergency. The recorded data is stored in
cloud which makes it reliable and retrievable in any device
connected to the internet.
IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE
A smart IoT based healthcare system has been proposed for
geriatric care which contains sensors associated with cloud
server for regular health monitoring. This caplet system with
wireless internet connectivity helps the patients to get regular
health care and create easy communication between doctor and
patient thereby eliminating need for physical presence. The
proposed caplet system helps the patient to take the right
medicine at the right time. Doctor, patient and caretaker have
individual login to access the server.

Wu et al., have developed a smart home based medication
tracker for elderly population. The system monitors the activity
of the person and displays a notification reminder in mobile
phone and television [11]. Luan et al., have proposed edge
computing based medication tracker. The system comprises of
a smart medicine box along with wearable sensor unit to
monitor the activities of the patient with depression [12].
TABLE III. COMPARISON WITH EXISTING SYSTEMS
Cloud Storage
Also, the data of medication and temperature, heart rate and
SpO2 of patient are stored on the server for doctor’s ease. IoT
based application of smart healthcare system has created a new
dimension of medication and healthcare in hospitals. The
objective of his study is to assist the dementia patients to take
medications on time. This system would be beneficial to elderly
people who need regular monitoring of health and medication.
Therefore, this proposed caplet system design could help in
enhancement of geriatric health through IoT based home care
solution.

Interaction

In future, this system could be extended to monitor more

Tracking

Tracking

Custom
Health

Design
User
Pill

Article Modules used physiological parameters by integrating various sensors into the
system. Along with physiological health, the activities of the
elderly could be monitored by adding a miniature camera to the
Siegemund
et al., 2003
Bluetooth, RFID,
✕ ✓ ✕ ✓ ✕
device that could give clinicians update about the condition of
Mobile phone
[13]
the patient. Moreover, the mental health of the elderly
Huang et al., Sensor, Telephone, population could be maintained by adding interactive voices or
✓ ✓ ✕ ✓ ✓
2014 [14] PC, API
Huang et al., Sensor, Arduino, chat bot to the system thereby upgrading the current system to
✕ ✓ ✕ ✓ ✓
2014 [9] Motor, ZigBee, PC a personal care companion for the patient. By adding emotional
RFID, ZigBee,
Li et al.,
LabVIEW, Motor, ✕ ✓ ✕ ✓ ✓
support along with remote healthcare monitoring, this caplet
2014 [10]
Arduino, PC system could be a better geriatric assist device in the future.
Camera, Matrix
Wu et al.,
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