Monitoring and analysis of physical activity and health conditions based on smart wearable devices

Abstract

The rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) brings sweeping changes in various industries. Healthcare industries have become a prime example where the Internet of Healthcare Things (IoHT) is making significant progress, particularly in how we approach real-time patient care. Traditional systems for monitoring older people and people with special needs are frequently expensive, require a large workforce, and fall short of providing real-time data. This paper introduces the “3-Tier Health Care Architecture,” an integrated approach to mitigating these issues. This architecture capitalizes on IoHT technologies and is constructed around three principal tiers: Sensor, Fog, and Cloud. The Sensor Tier employs Health Metrics Acquisition Units (HMAUs) fitted with an nRF5340 Development Kit, capturing an extensive range of health-related metrics via wearable sensors. These metrics are then relayed to the Local Processing Units (LPUs) in Fog Tier, which operates on Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W microprocessors for the initial data processing before forwarding to the cloud. The Cloud Tier uses a hybrid CNN-LSTM Machine Learning (ML) model to perform Real-Time Healthcare Monitoring (RTHM) status assessments and includes an Early Warning System for immediate alert issuance. The proposed architecture is resilient, scalable, and efficient, serving as a fortified and all-encompassing solution for RTHM. This enables quick medical interventions, thus elevating healthcare quality and potentially life-saving.