Development of a Medical Care Terminal for Efficient Monitoring of Bedridden Subjects

Filipe Pereira,Rui Silva,Karolina Bezerra,Filomena Soares,José Machado,Vítor Carvalho,Demétrio Matos

doi:10.1155/2016/3591059

Filipe Pereira, Rui Silva + Show 5 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/3591059

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Abstract

This work is developed in the context of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and has as main objective the development of a mechatronic system that allows the care of bedridden patients with ongoing medical care handled by a single person. The developed Medical Care Terminal (MCT) improves autonomy in home care, safety, comfort, and hygiene of bedridden patients. The MCT has six biomedical sensors and four environmental sensors. Data acquisition and processing is performed using Arduino and LabVIEW platforms, respectively. The proposed solution has, as main feature, its adaptability to the patient needs. One of the MCT functionalities is the remote access to the patient data through the web. The caregiver may request help from a specialist who sends back information in real time to perform first aid assistance. This device has a flexible configuration allowing a fast and cheap reconfiguration according the specific needs of the patient. The proposed mechatronic system intends to meet the needs of bedridden patients improving their quality of life, health, safety, and comfort, while enabling the remote monitoring of the patients.

Highlights

Bedridden patients are confined to live in bed due to illness or infirmity
The second test was carried out to obtain the value of the galvanic skin response of the patient
This work describes the development of a Medical Care Terminal (MCT), to be included in a mechatronic system, able to allow the remote monitoring of bedridden patients

Summary

Introduction

Bedridden patients are confined to live in bed due to illness or infirmity. This category of people requires additional care to avoid the formation of pressure ulcers due to the long periods of time in the same physical posture. If the pressure remains too high in the same region for a couple of hours, skin tissues get damaged and may even die. Since the discomfort of these pressure ulcers, for the patients, is enormous and the costs of treatment are high, the prevention of pressure ulcers is of utmost importance [1,2,3]. The patient must change position every two hours requiring the presence of health professionals [4, 5]

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Conclusion