Integration of IoT and Fog Computing in Healthcare Based the Smart Intensive Units

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has enormous capability to revolutionize medical care and enhance global health indicators in the health sector. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is an important part of the medical sector because it treats patients who have suffered a terrible accident, have a very serious or life-threatening condition or are undergoing an effective medical treatment that necessitates 24-hour care and support. For this reason, one of the most important issues that hospitals suffer is lack of patient monitoring systems cause ICU health attendants and doctors were overburdened, which can lead to medical errors due to a huge workload that exceeded their ability. As a result, even a minor delay in recognizing a patient’s deterioration might result in severe disability or death. Therefore, continuously patient monitoring in ICU is the most crucial process. That’s why a way to optimize the ICU monitoring procedure in order to minimize delayed detection and reduce the workload of ICU doctors and caregivers is needed. In this study, we proposed a smart IoT-based ICU patient monitoring system to help doctors and hospitals to monitor the patients continuously and in making quick decisions. Our proposed method can measure patient’s body parameters (temperature, SpO2, heartbeat, blood pressure, ECG, and it can also measure glucose, lactate, blood circulation, red blood cells, white blood cells, calcium, potassium from the patient fluids) in real-time and in case of anomalous values of the patient’s body parameters, the device will send a notification to the assigned doctor and the Emergency Care Unit (ECU) of the hospital. Doctors can also monitor the patient remotely through our system.