Design and Development of a Wireless Remote Point-of-Care Patient Monitoring System

Remote patient monitoring is an alternative to regular home check-ups of patients with certain special medical conditions or the elderly who are unable to regularly visit a healthcare facility. This technology reduces the number of home visits which are now only required when special attention is needed. This paper presents the design and development of a remote point-of-care patient monitoring system which allows the patient to be monitored remotely while remaining in the comfort of their home. The system described here allows wireless data acquisition from eight patient-worn sensors. The number and type of sensors are configurable according to the subject´s specific condition. The system uses the standard Bluetooth^reg technology for communication with a home based monitor which in turn relays this data to the remote healthcare facility using the internet. This data can be used for real-time evaluation of the patient´s conditions as well as data logging for later analysis. Since this is a configurable system, a few selected sensors are connected to demonstrate the concept of remote patient monitoring; these include Electrocardiogram (ECG), Electroencephalogram (EEG), Airflow, respiration, patient movement and body temperature. The results obtained from these tests are also presented in this paper.