JOURNAL OF MADENT ALELEM COLLEGE VOL 9 NO 1 YEAR 2017
Design and Implementation of Patient Monitoring System for Medical Sign
using GSM and Microcontroller
Reem Jamal Abbas* Rawaa Abdel Ridha kadhim* Siraj Qays Mahdi**
* Assist Lect. /Computer Engineering Techniques Department/ Electrical Engineering Technical College/
Middle Technical University.
** Lect. / Computer Engineering Techniques Department/ Electrical Engineering Technical College/ Middle
Technical University.
Abstract:
The work presented in this paper concerned with the design of a new remote
monitoring system for patients in An intensive care unit (ICU) , which can be used to read the
medical signs such as (heart rate, temperature value and oxygen saturation percentage) from
the patient's body beside checking the pacemaker device and send the values to the remote
area. The proposed system deals with the patient vital signs as an input to send them to a
computer in the nursing room by a transmitter-receiver system which composed of two
Arduino kits connected with Bluetooth devices. The signal received by computer is processed
and if there is an abnormal condition a message will be send to doctor mobile through Global
System for Mobile Communications (GSM). The mechanism of the system is to send the
medical signs to doctors in a remote area. Tإhe computer sends these values to doctor's
mobile. Finally, visual basic language was used to implement the frame work of the system.
Keywords: Arduino kit, medical sensors, Bluetooth, visual basic, GSM mobile, ICU.
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تصميم وتنفيذ نظام مراقبة االشارات الطبية للمريض باستخدام تقنية ال GSMوالمتحكم الدقيق
الخالصة:
العمل في هذا البحث يتعامل مع تصميم نظام مراقبة المريض في وحدة العناية المركزة عن بعد ,والذي يمكن ان يستخدم
لقراءة االشارات الطبية مثل (معدل سرعة دقات القلب ,درجة الحرارة ,ونسبة االوكسجين بالدم) من جسم المريض
باالضافة الى التحقق من عمل جهاز منظم ضربات القلب وارسال القيم الى النظام المقترح ,والذي بدوره يتعامل مع
اشارات المريض الحيوية كاشارة ادخال الرسالها الى الحاسوب الموجود في غرفة الممرضات باستخدام منظومة االرسال
واالستالم المكونة من بوردين اردوينو مربوطين عن طريق البلوتوث .االشارة المستلمة من قبل الحاسوب يتم معالجتها
ومالحظة ان كانت غير طبيعية ففي هذه الحالة يتم ارسال رسالة عن طريق نظام ال GSMالى موبايل الطبيب .ميكانيكة
عمل النظام هو القيام بارسال االشارات الطبية الى االطباء عن بعد .اذ ان الحاسوب يقوم بعملية ارسال هذه االشارات
الطبية الى موبايل الطبيب .واخيرا لغة الفجوال بيسك تم استخدامها لتنفيذ هيكلية العمل بهذا النظام.
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1. Introduction:
As a result of development in life, health monitoring becomes an important researched
field. So researched in this field were developed through years for many applications such as
military, homecare, hospital, sport training and activity emergency [1].
Telemedicine applications give a wide help in health monitoring field, where this
technology is used to transmit medical information about the patient’s status electronically,
so it gives an easy way to monitor and diagnose the patient remotely, such as the ICU
network [2]. ICU Networking means connecting the Intensive care unit (ICU) PC’s (client) to
the nursing room PC (server) with Local Area Unit (LAN),Metropolitan Area Network (
MAN) or other network by providing a set of rules for communication called protocols, these
protocols should be known by all participating hosts, which allows different computers with
different operating characteristics to communicate with each other, and that in order to
present whole information about the patient situation in nursing room so any abnormal
condition can be recognized immediately by nurse without being in the ICU which could be
then sent to doctor mobile [3].
Revolution in microcontrollers through years led to discover the Arduino, which is an
open hardware board that rise in thoughts and projects of robotic control easily and simply by
using an open hardware programmable language (Arduino c), the ability of using Arduino in
projects that used a revolved engineering languages like matlab and java, beside the
simplicity of dealing with and programming it, makes Arduino on the top of microcontrollers
types [4]. Although there are a wide researches in this field but more efforts are required to
prove clinical and cost effectiveness.
G.Virone, et.al. had been proposed system architecture for smart healthcare based on
wireless sensor network (WSN). They suggested a strong potential for WSNs for low-cost
and deployment of multimodal sensor for an improved quality of medical care [5].
Aartvan Halteren, et.al. had been developed a system allows the incorporation of
diverse medical sensors via wireless connections and the live transmissions of the measured
vital signs over public wireless networks to health care providers. The results documented the
feasibility of using the system, but also demonstrated logistical problems with use of the
BANs and the infrastructure for transmitting mobile healthcare data [6].
Dr. Deepack Choudhary, et.al. had been developed a portable real-time wireless
health monitoring system. The system is used for remote monitoring of patient’s heart rate
and oxygen saturation in blood, the system was designed and implemented using ZigBee-
wireless technology. They found that the system can successfully install for testing patient’s
home for health care monitoring and the wireless sensor network can operates on an area of
10-15 square meters [1].
This paper was implemented by developing a monitoring system to pursuing the
patient's status immediately. The system was depending on microcontroller kit (Arduino) and
using its Bluetooth network for sending the medical vital sign from the patient's body to
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remote ICU (special computer) instead of the traditional computer network for reading and
sending the important signs and avoids the connectionless problems.
2. Proposed Work.
The purpose of this work is to design a medical wireless monitoring system capable to
sense the status of patient medical sign (the temperature, the heart rate through the Patient's
blood pressure, in addition to regulate the abnormal beating of heart through the pace makers
shown in Fig. (1).
Sensing Control Communication Monitoring
System System Network System
(ICU)
Fig (1): Shows The General Block Diagram Of The Monitoring System.
2.1 System Descriptions:
The system consist of many parts to satisfy the requirements of the idea as shown in fig
(2)
Sensor1 Computer Mobile
Ethernet
Arduino
Arduino
Modem
Receive
kits
Send
kits
Sensor2 Bluetooth 1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Sensor3 * 0 #
Fig. (2): Shows the Main Components of the Health Monitoring System.
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2.1.1 Sensors: many of the medical sensors was connected to the Arduino ports to read
the patient's status:
a. Temperature sensor: the responsibility of this sensor is to read the body's
temperature and identify the status.
b. Heart rate: is the number of heart beat per minute; each beat represents the
contract and relaxation of heart.
C1
Finger cuff B2
10nF
5v
R1
5v 1M
R2
1M
C2
2 3
IR LED 1 1
A0 on arduino
3 500nF R3 2
1M
Photodiode
R4
10K
R5
1K
C3
10
Fig (3): shows the circuit diagram of Heart Rate [7].
c. Pacemaker Sensor: is a device used to regulate the abnormal beating of heart; it is an
internal device that transplanted within human body. It is composed of three parts_
input/output leads sensor circuit pulse generator the input/output leads are electrodes that
connected to heart chambers taking the input signal from the heart to the pulse generator
and transmit the output signal from the pacemaker back to the heart. Sensing circuit
receives the heart input signal, processing it to a form acceptable to the pulse generator by
using an oscillator triggering by the heart input wave and gives square wave as an output
which goes to the pulse generator.
The pulse generator is the most important part of the pacemaker it is a preprogrammed
microcontroller receives its input from the from the heart through the sensing circuit and
responds to it with a stimuli that transmitted back to the heart the stimuli generate according
to the program of the generator as shown in fig.(4). The pacing mode of the pacemaker
should be only when it is needed so that there is no interference between the natural pacing
and artificial pacing [8].
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To understand the mechanism of artificial pacing more clearly we will take the R wave as an
example which represents the ventricular contraction which in turn pumps the blood to the
big arteries in the human body. In case of absence of R wave the pacemaker will pace by
giving electrical activity to the heart while if the R wave is already exist there no need for
artificial pacing .for a single chamber pacemaker which takes the input from one chamber
only from the heart (one chamber needed to be regulated) the pacemaker has three paths to
follow: RESET timer, WAIT, and PACE. after the R wave be sensed the generator will
switch to WAIT stat for a time delay of 0.83 second which is the normal duration between
two R waves, after this delay if another R wave sensed then the generator goes to RESET
timer and start counting a delay of 0.83 second (WAIT state) if R wave doesn’t sensed then
the generator goes to PACE mode and give an electrical stimulus (pacing) delivered to the
heart the leads and so on [8].
Fig. (4): shows the block diagram of Pacemaker.
d. Oximeter sensor : is a circuit that consist of red and infrared LEDs that
generates red and infrared wavelengths respectively as shown in fig.(5), these
wavelengths passed to a photo diode detector throughout the finger where a
portion of the two wavelengths absorbed by blood vessels in the finger
(arterioles). The absorption ratio depends on oxygen saturation percentage( no
of oxy hemoglobin molecules and the no of deoxy hemoglobin to the number
of the total hemoglobin molecules) and the transmitted wavelengths of both
LED s received by a single photodiode , after that the received light passed to
a timing circuit that supplies a pulses with proper repetition rate to derive red
and infrared wavelengths alternately so it acts as digital switch .after that both
light wavelengths red and infrared amplified and convert to a voltage using
current to voltage converter circuit operational amplifier (op_amp) . As the
wavelengths received in photo diode in pulsed form because the blood in the
artery is pulsed a sample and hold circuit is used to separate the wavelengths
each with a single path. The timing circuit will used again to generate control
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pulses of the sample and hold circuit. The output voltage then passed to a band
pass filter to remove low and high frequency noise after that the clear voltage
signal passed to an Arduino to be converted to a digital signal and send to the
computer by Bluetooth [9].
Fig. (5): shows the block diagram of Oximetry Sensor [9].
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2.1.2 Connecting the Bluetooth with microcontrollerkit (Arduino):
Bluetooth is a wireless networking device that transmits data from point to point over a
short distance using a communication protocol. In this work the Bluetooth is used to transmit
data from medical sensors to computer by connecting it with the Arduino Uno
microcontroller kit in both sides as shown in fig.(6). HC-05 Bluetooth module is used for this
purpose. The Bluetooth element connected wirelessly to Arduino kit in a serial module, it is
easy to use a two pins chosen from Arduino kit to represent the connection of serial port
between Bluetooth shield and Arduino where the Tx of Bluetooth side is connected to the Tx
of Arduino side and the Rx of Arduino side is connected to the Tx of the Bluetooth side and
with a suitable Arduino program the data transmission is achieves. Fig.(7) shows the overall
system work to follow up on the patient’s status.
AREF GND 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
state
TX RX
RXD
TXD
Bluetooth HC-05 Arduino uno
GND
VCC
KEY
10REF RESET 3V3 5V GND GND VIN A0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5
Fig. (6): shows the block diagram of Bluetooth connection with microcontroller kit
(Arduino).
2.1.3 Connecting Mobile Phone with personal Computer:
Mobile phone technology has advanced in recent year. Many applications with mobile
phones were implemented for sending short message service (SMS) from pc to mobile phone,
where, when the system detect a (observe) a dangerous (risk) status or a threshold is reached.
The monitoring system sends SMS through GSM to the doctor’s mobile phone to inform him
about the emergency case. Fig.(7): shows the modem device essentially consist of an internet
modem and global system for mobile communication (GSM) modem / SMS gateway, the
SMS sending is done through the SMS gateway. Patient information management system has
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knowledge about the number doctor. Hence the system basically will first query the database
before sending SMS. SMS message to the corresponding doctor with respect to the patient ID
as well as the message that has been sent to the doctor.
PC Modem GSM
GSM
Fig. (7) : Shows the interface between personal computer and mobile phone through
GSM modem.
3. Working of the system:
Fig.(8): shows the flowchart of the health monitoring system.
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yes
start
Read the sensors' values from
the first Arduino
Initialize the Arduino
Send the values to the second
Arduino
Connect the two Arduino
through Bluetooth Network
Display the sensors’ values on
the computer
Set the Arduino with the
computer
No
No
Are the sensors ON Is the modem connect with
mobile phone
1 yes
Send the emergency value to
the mobile phone
yes
Is the Bluetooth network
connected
No
End
Fig.(8) : Flowchart illustrate the overall system mechanism.
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4. Implementing the Proposed System.
The implementation of the monitoring system was achieved using hardware
implementation from system's parts and visual basic language (ver.6) to programming the
frame work as shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10.
Fig.(9): shows the hardware implementation of monitoring systems
Fig.(10): shows the hardware implementation of monitoring systems with GSM and mobile
phone.
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Conclusions:
The system is more flexible due to the usage of Bluetooth connection between the
first and second Arduino. Where, the vital signs and parameters data has been sent
immediately to the server' PC in addition to alarm message to phone for directing the
responsible about the patient's condition. At this meaning, the facility of data sending
depend on the HC-05 Bluetooth which the range of Bluetooth is approximately (10 meters)
that is capable to insure a large building. Moreover, Tx& Rx are separate pins for Bluetooth
HC-05 instead of using microcontroller kit (Arduino) port's pins. Hence, this leads to
reduced response time (sending and receiving) so as separate Pins are used instead of
Arduino pins. The GSM network is higher baud rate that led to send all the sensors values to
the mobile phone.
References:
1. (Sep/Oct 2012), network”, IJAITI, vol. 1 No.5 ISSN:2277-1891, “Real-time health
monitoring system on wireless sensor ,Dr. Deepak Choudhary et.al.,.
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healthcare.
3. Wesley, A. (1992). Wokingham, UK”Data communications, Computer networks and
open systems”, Third Edition, Halsall, F.
4. Mellis, D.A., et.al. (2007). conference on human factors in computing systems San
Jose, California, USA “Arduino: An open electronics prototyping platform.
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sensor network for health monitoring”.
G. Virone, et.al.,
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