Automated wireless system for individuals requiring continuous remote care

This paper presents development of a wireless electronic healthcare system for automated real-time monitoring and control of patients requiring continuous care. Wireless solutions for healthcare can achieve improved patient-care at reduced cost. The system presented here utilizes mobile phones for communication as well as data transfer. Separate functions of the system allow: access to patient's data, system generated warning calls, remote control of various patient related devices and storage of data in a central location. In addition, the system features interactive communication with the users utilizing artificial machine voice generated by speech synthesizer. Each mode of communication is password protected for security. The system is based on microcontrollers consisting of two main units - Patient's Unit (PU) and Hospital Unit (HU). PU comprised of a microcontroller, a dual tune multifrequency encoder/decoder (DTMF) and a mobile phone. HU is a microcontroller based storage system connected to a telephone network. PU acquired and analyzed real-time data from the devices and performed three main functions interfaced with mobile pones: Interactive communication of patient's vital signs and remote control of the devices; reporting of any abnormality; regular data transfer for remote storage. For device testing, PU in the present study acquired simulated patient's body temperature (BT), blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR). All the mentioned functions of the system were tested successfully with password verification. Values for BT, BP and HR were obtained from the system interactively over mobile phone. To test remote control of the devices, a fan was switched on/off by giving instructions over phone. An increase in temperature of a sensor above a fixed value (38^oF in this case) resulted in automatic call from the system to a pre-set phone for reporting. PU also transferred data through HU automatically every 4 hours.