Chapter 4 - Cloud-IoMT-based wearable body sensors network for monitoring elderly patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused unmatched harm and death to elderly people worldwide. As a result, many countries around the world are or have been on lockdown, and most patients testing positive or suspected as being positive for COVID-19 are placed in self-isolation in a hospital or home self-isolation to reduce the spread of infection. Several nations recognized for their effective healthcare systems are experiencing a shortage of intensive-care mechanical respirators, healthcare professionals, protective equipment, and bed spaces in quarantine hospitals. There are unmeasurable health challenges that have taken an immense toll within the elderly population globally. In particular, elderly people have to face various types of health, financial, physical, and mental struggles due to COVID-19. This pandemic has created pressure and anxiety on healthcare sectors, and this called for the need of remote patient monitoring. Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)-based smart healthcare is having an increased impact in dealing with COVID-19 in this era of innovative digital expertise. The popularity of wearable devices enables a new perspective for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases. Wearable devices is a solution that provides an effective option for the omnipresent, reliable, and accessible tracking of aged patients in remote environments, and in real-time. Hence, wearable and implantable body area network instruments are very useful for the constant tracking of the aged person during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this chapter explains the important role of cloud-IoMT-based wearable wireless sensor networks in medicine to reduce the burden on caregivers and to help the aged to live an active life during the pandemic. Also, an architecture is proposed of an intelligent cloud-IoMT-based elderly healthcare monitoring scheme using a wearable body sensor network. The proposed method advises and alerts medical personnel in real time about a change to the health conditions of elderly patients during the COVID-19 pandemic to suggest preventive measures in saving lives. The cloud-IoMT-based system can accommodate any number of wearable sensor devices and a huge number of applications. The platform also enables remote health monitoring, real-time monitoring, contact tracking, and prompt analysis of a COVID-19 outbreak, thus reducing the workload of medical personnel for the control and prevention of an outbreak. The cloud-IoMT-based system is a quick and rapid way of tracking, monitoring, and diagnosing elderly patients that helps to prevent the spreading of the infection to others.