Development of an e-Guardian for the Single Elderly or the Chronically-Ill Patients

This paper describes the development of a remote physiological monitoring (RPM) system named e-Guardian for the elderly living alone or patients having chronic diseases. e-Guardian is a home-based e-monitoring and notification system which is low-cost, small, extremely power saving, simple in design and operation, and robust in performance. The centerpieces of e-Guardian are wearable devices which are capable of measuring blood pressure, monitoring heart rate, detecting accidental falls, tracking location, etc. e-Guardian adopts a modular design approach so that users have freedom to fit desired sensor modules to it. It communicates via ZigBee mesh network with the Base Station which is integrated to a GSM module. Vital signs and health status are sent in real time to caregivers´ mobile phones in human readable SMS format. Meanwhile, caregivers are able to query the users´ status and initiate simple diagnosis via only SMS commands in case of emergency.