Abstract

The growing number of chronic diseases have stretched the healthcare sector. Globally, more than 36 million deaths per year are attributed to chronic disease complications. This has increased the demand for telemedicine in managing chronic patients as they must be on continuous monitoring for a long time. The involvement of wireless sensor networks and cloud computing technology in the health sector is increasing due to the potential it possesses in remote sensing and monitoring applications. This paper presents a developed system prototype for monitoring the heartbeat rate and body temperature of chronic patients using sensors. The monitored data are sent to a cloud database in real-time via an internet connection using the ESP8266 wireless module. The approach involves connecting a heart pulse sensor, an MLX90614 contactless temperature sensor, and the ESP8266 module to the Arduino development board. The goal of this work is to create a system that interfaces chronic patients and medical personnel in an attempt to avert the effects of insufficient health facilities, especially in rural Africa. The patient’s data in the cloud database can also be retrieved by medical personnel anytime in order to track the patient’s conditions and to advise the patient accordingly. The sensed heartbeat and body temperature readings were processed, sent, and recorded in the cloud database effectively.

Highlights

  • The management of chronic diseases has become one of the biggest challenges that health sector faces nowadays

  • The healthcare sector is struggling to meet the needs of people with chronic diseases as they need continuous monitoring for a long time, commonly outside the health facilities [1]

  • The advancement of wireless sensor networks and cloud computing technology has created an opportunity for adopting telemedicine

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Summary

Introduction

The management of chronic diseases has become one of the biggest challenges that health sector faces nowadays. The healthcare sector is struggling to meet the needs of people with chronic diseases as they need continuous monitoring for a long time, commonly outside the health facilities [1]. The challenges of chronic disease management have resulted to the increasing use of telemedicine. The integration of wireless communication, cloud computing, and sensor networks in the field of medicine has facilitated and promoted telemedicine. There has been a rapid growth in the use of low cost wireless communication protocols and sensors in healthcare which has greatly promoted the use of telemedicine [6]. Sensor networks have become a serious focus for research and deployment in the fields of oil and gas and agriculture [7, 8]

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