Android application developed to extend health monitoring device range and real-time patient tracking

This paper presents the Android mobile phone application developed in order to extended data communication range of our wireless health monitoring device. The main scope is to monitor people at risk in real time even if they are outside of their home and wireless home gateway is out of range. Because real-time data acquisition and alerting functions are important goals in this project, the above mentioned Android mobile phone application is capable to met internet based data transfer, tracking and alerting requirements. In the first part of this paper we present our health monitoring device interacting with mobile phone using Bluetooth connectivity and state of the art in Android mobile phone development and GPS location sensors and technologies. The second section presents how we developed the software for proper estimate the user real location. In the third section experimental results are described involving two different Android mobile phones, equipped with different hardware and software resources. Mobile phones are compared in GPS accuracy, test were made indoor, outdoor, and at different floor levels. Real-time tracking experiments were made simulating real situations when the patient went for shopping to the supermarkets or visited his family. The last section is about conclusions regarding to the introduced mobile phone based data transfer, tracking and alerting functions, their benefits, implementing costs and applicability.