Development of a Portable Embedded Patient Monitoring System

Abstract

One of the first medical devices we encounter when we visit a hospital care unit is the patient monitoring (PM) system. This system informs doctors and nurses about the patient’s vital signs. However, typical PMs do not have a remote monitoring capability, which necessitates constant onsite attendance by support personnel. Further, PMs are generally too large to carry. Thus, we have developed a Wireless Patient Monitoring System (WIPAMS), which is a portable PM that monitors the biomedical signs of patients in real time and sends them to remote stations for display, with alerts when necessary. WIPAMS differs from conventional PMs in two aspects: first, its wireless communication capability allows vital signs to be monitored remotely so it obviates the requirement for onsite support personnel; and second, it is portable so patients can move around while their biomedical signs are being monitored. WIPAMS is also notable because of its implementation: it uses Android as the underlying OS, while a pulse oximeter, thermometer, and electrocardiogram reader are integrated into the system. Monitoring and communication applications are implemented on the OS using threads, which facilitates the stable and timely manipulation of signals and the appropriate sharing of resources. Based on the graphic display of the biomedical data collected, we verified that the multitasking implementation used in the system was suitable for PMs and for other u-Healthcare applications.