IoT Enabled Real-Time Pulse Rate Monitoring System

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) as a technology has been proving its mettle in a wide variety of applications like health care, energy auditing, smart home, smart cities, retail, industrial automation, and agriculture [1]. Out of all these applications, the health care sector has drawn particular attention of the researchers working in the IoT domain. The health care sector itself is so wide and demands research innovations in areas like telemedicine, e-health care, remote patient monitoring, and remote drug administration . Remote health monitoring using Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular research area now a days. It leads to a good improvement in the quality of life, if healthcare system is able to do an accurate diagnosis remotely in a minimal time. E-health care system is also a novel solution for elderly patients suffering from chronic diseases as they face difficulties in visiting the doctor. Remote patient monitoring is even highly required in the lockdown situations due to COVID-19  as it can help in maintaining social distancing in an effective manner. Doctors  can do real-time monitoring of chronic diseases using IoT platform which is based on the accurate pulse rate measurement and it will be very effective for the lifesaving of patients [10]. Real-time monitoring of pulse rate can also be beneficial for the treatment of other health abnormalities like sleep disorders and depression [2]. This paper represents the development and working of a pulse rate monitoring system using IoT. The proposed system consists of an analog pulse rate sensor which is placed around the fingertip of the patient to detect the pulse rate based on variation in the flow of blood to different regions of the body. Pulse rate sensor is connected to the NodeMCU ESP8266 Wi-Fi module which processes the pulse rate signal and transfer it to the remote server. Finally, pulse rate in BPM (Beat Per Minute) is fetched through HTTP  (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) GET request and is accessed by the health professional on the mobile screen using an android application for remote diagnosis and decision making [3-4].The main purpose of the proposed system is to monitor the patient remotely by a health professional, check for any health abnormality based on the measured pulse rate and make decision for the treatment to be done. Based on the accurate diagnosis using this system, treatment can be provided remotely at the right time and it can save life of patient and cost of treatment significantly. This system has good possibilities of extension for remote diagnosis of various type of diseases by the addition of more sensors which can monitor critical health related parameters.