Design and Development of a Wristband for Continuous Vital Signs Monitoring of COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), as a pandemic, has intensely impacted the global healthcare systems. Remote health monitoring of positive COVID-19 patients isolating at home has been identified as a practical approach to minimize the mortality rate. This work proposes a cost-effective and ease-to-use wristband with the capability of continuous real-time monitoring of heart rate (HR), respiration rate (RR), and blood oxygen saturation (SpO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> ), temperature and accelerometry. The proposed wristband comprises three different sensing elements, namely, PPG sensor, temperature sensor, and accelerometer. The sensors' output signals are transmitted via Bluetooth. Process of the PPG signals measured from the wrist anatomical position provides essential information regarding HR, RR, and SpO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> . The deployed temperature sensor and accelerometer, measure the wearers’ body temperature and physical activities. Experimental results obtained from a group of subjects demonstrate that the wristband can monitor HR, RR, SpO <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</inf> , and body temperature with the Mean Absolute Errors (MAEs) of 2.75 bpm, 1.25 breaths/min, 0.64%, and 0.22 C <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">o</sup> , respectively. Such a small variation confirms that the wristband can be potentially deployed in the public health network to determine and track patients infected by COVID-19.