Integration of Active RFID and WSN for real time low-cost data monitoring of patients in hospitals

RFID has been around since World War II but was viewed as too limited and expensive in functionality for most of commercial use. With advancement in technology, cost of system components has reduced and capabilities have increased, making RFID more popular. The development of RFID since the 1970´s has been remarkable and many such systems are available online for purchasing. Now-a-days there are sensors embedded inside the RFID tag which along with its unique identification can send the sensor value as well. But it is restricted to only sensing pressure, temperature of environment etc and much of the complex world analog signals are difficult to integrate with an RFID tag [1]. Especially the existence of such RFID systems in Healthcare doesn´t seem to exist in real time inspite of several theories been proposed [2]-[5]. This paper proposes a low cost approach to the development of a system that can monitor the real time parameters of a patient using an Active UHF RFID system along with the respective parameter monitoring sensor. This is done so that there is a detailed record of the patient which can be used by the doctors to examine the condition later as well. The Real Time values are plotted on a graph using Visual Studio 10.Thus the integration of Health Monitoring sensors along with an RFID to uniquely distinguish each patient in a Ward with its measuring data is achieved. As the entire system is being autonomous an additional feature that has been added to this is the inclusion of a GSM module which will notify an emergency to the doctor in case if the optimum data fails to be received which in totality makes this project a smart e-healthcare solution for hospitals.