mHEALTH: REVIEW OF MOBILE HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS

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International Journal of Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology

(IJECET)

Volume 7, Issue 2, March-April 2016, pp. 18-24, Article ID: IJECET_07_02_003

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ISSN Print: 0976-6464 and ISSN Online: 0976-6472

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mHEALTH: REVIEW OF MOBILE HEALTH

MONITORING SYSTEMS

Naseem Rao

Research Scholar, ECE Deptt. Al-Falah University, Faridabad, Haryana, India

Anil Kumar

Vice Chancellor, Al-Falah University, Faridabad, Haryana, India

T. A. Abbasi

Adjunct Professor, ECE Deptt. Al-Falah University, Faridabad, Haryana, India

ABSTRACT

With rise in world population, cost of healthcare also increased rapidly

which led to the demand of low cost health monitoring solutions. In recent

times, non-invasive wearable sensors have played an important role in

healthcare applications. With advancement in wireless communication

technologies, ubiquitous computing and embedded systems, the sensors need

not be invasive anymore to accurately monitor a patient's health status, rather

can be managed by user itself so as to keep a record of one's health condition.

The advancement of healthcare technologies has enabled patients to monitor

their vital health parameters on their own, and saves them from regular tiring

hospital visits & high cost of laboratory medical checkups. It has also reduced

the burden of healthcare service providers, thereby reducing overall medical

costs. This paper provides a review of current status of mobile healthcare

applications.

Key words: Mobile Healthcare, Non Invasive Wearable Sensors

Cite this Article: Naseem Rao, Anil Kumar and T. A. Abbasi. mHealth:

Review of Mobile Health Monitoring Systems, International Journal of

Electronics and Communication Engineering & Technology, 7(2), 2016, pp.

18-24.

http://www.iaeme.com/IJECET/issues.asp?JType=IJECET&VType=7&IType=2

1. INTRODUCTION

In today's world, the population is rising globally and thereby the rate of aging is also

increasing. As per WHO statistics, Indian population aged 65 and older is rapidly

increasing and will reach about 230 million by 2050[1].It has been estimated that the

mHealth: Review of Mobile Health Monitoring Systems


older population will be higher than ever before. Thus, with passing years, the aging

population is rising rapidly leading to increased healthcare expenses [2, 3] and hence

there is an immediate need for an efficient, reliable, pervasive and low cost health

monitoring system. As the growth of the nation depends on the health quotient of its

citizens, healthcare solutions should be made available at reasonable costs in order to

widen their reach. In this scenario, mobile computing has come across as a boon and

non invasive wearable sensors have played a vital role in realizing mobile healthcare

applications.

Wearable sensors come under a broad category of wireless sensors and overcome

the limitations of traditional healthcare monitoring systems. These sensors can be

worn by the user on body or in body such that they provide minimal or no hindrance

in performing daily activities. Thus, wearable sensors can be of two types namely

invasive and non invasive. Invasive sensors are those which are worn in body or are

implanted into patient's body. These may include the implantation of various sensors

for therapeutic or physiological signal monitoring purposes. Non- invasive sensors are

largely accepted these days for health monitoring systems over traditional health

monitoring systems as they facilitate mobility and thereby ubiquitous and pervasive

monitoring with zero intervention in user activities. These sensors are worn on body

by the user with appropriate localization so as to accurately measure the desired

health parameter. These sensors can be integrated resulting into a single operable

device [6,14,16,20,22,25] or a network of wearable sensors resulting into body area

network[7,11,17,19,23,26,28].Since the last decade the research field has seen an

increased acceptance ,particularly in the field of healthcare as it facilitates continuous

and long term ubiquitous health care monitoring unlike traditional hospital trends

which led to prolonged bed-ridden days and restricted mobility. The traditional

sensors and medical systems are not suitable for long term health monitoring as they

cannot be worn for longer durations due to their bulky, interfering nature, feeling of

restlessness and discomfort along with immobilization when connected for longer

hours. On the other hand, wearable sensors can be easily worn and carried around in

the home or outside environment thereby making anytime, anywhere[24,25] real time

health monitoring possible. Non- invasive wearable sensors can be used to measure

numerous prominent biosignals. Some of them with typical values for healthy adult

are as shown in figure 1.Various other biosignals include electricity activity of the

brain and muscles, skin conductance, blood glucose level, body movements and many

others. These sensors have many advantages like unobtrusiveness, mobility, painless

operation and many others.

Table 1 Biosensensors to measure physiological parameters and typical values for healthy adult

Physiological Biosensor Values for

parameter healthy adult

Heart rate ECG 60-100

electrodes beats/min

Oxygen Pulse 94-100%

saturation(Spo2) oximeter

Blood pressure Blood Systolic:<120

pressure mmHg

monitor Diastolic:<80

mmHg

Respiration rate Respiration 12-20

sensor breaths/min

Body temperature Temperature About 37 ˚C

sensor

Naseem Rao, Anil Kumar and T. A. Abbasi


2. HEALTHCARE APPLICATIONS FOR NON-INVASIVE

WEARABLE SENSORS

Non-invasive wearable sensors can be used for simply measuring the vital sign

parameters of the user for routine health checkup or for measuring various

physiological parameters for long-term continuous health monitoring [11,15,26-28] in

case of chronic diseases like asthma, cardiac arrest, osteoarthritis etc. Further this

technology can also be used for fall detection [5,10,19] and posture monitoring for

elderly people and gives an alert in case of emergency situations. Also, these sensors

can be used for the treatment of cognitive ailments such as Alzheimer, Dementias,

Parkinson's disease [22] etc. These sensors can be found in the form of an intact

device or gadget like wrist-worn device, pendants, shirts etc or in form of body area

network such that data from multiple sensors is collected and processed in a network.

Applications incorporated by these sensors can be categorized as follows:

Physiological parameters: This involves continuous monitoring of various

physiological parameters namely heart rate and electrical activity of heart, oxygen

saturation, blood pressure, temperature and many others. Continuous monitoring of

physiological parameters help in maintaining healthier lifestyle, prevention of any

chronic diseases, or efficient treatment of any ongoing health problem.

Physical parameters: These parameters are mainly measured to closely monitor the

activity, posture, etc. in case of a physical impairment due to improper or no

functioning of a patient's organ, This may involve decreased motor ability, hearing

loss, etc.

Cognitive parameters: Monitoring of these parameters is required in case of

monitoring of user's behavior, or to monitor cognitive illness in patients suffering

from dementia or other diseases. This is also of great help in case of tracking patient's

behavior after illness. Thus application of this technology ranges from leading a

healthy lifestyle to rehabilitation condition. The real-time and continuous monitoring

has made this technology highly desirable. It has proved to be of great significance for

both physicians as well as users. This technology has wide application range as shown

below from motivating and encouraging people to keep a track on their health records

to long-term management of chronic illness at suitable environment within their

comfort zones.

Individual monitoring for well-being and leading healthy lifestyle.

Determining possible symptoms and patterns of detected or expected illness.

Continuous monitoring of patients suffering from any chronic disease or illness and

determining acute conditions beforehand.

After-treatment monitoring of patients and detection of any recurring symptom.



3. GENERIC ARCHITECTURE

Figure1 Generic architecture of mobile health monitoring system

The generic architecture of mobile health monitoring systems used nowadays is

shown in figure1 mainly comprises of three main units namely:

Sensing unit

Central controlling unit

Communication unit

The sensing unit can be in the form of wrist worn device [6], necklace [10,

15],shirt[18],or any such wearable device. This device may consist of a single sensor

or multiple sensors integrated together based upon the requirement and size of the

device. The sensing unit acquires data about the vital parameters and sends this data

periodically to controlling unit. Central controlling unit performs processing on this

data, basically filters and analyze this data in accordance with the detecting algorithm.

The analyzed data is then sent to the Smartphone, PDA or any mobile device over

short communication range like Bluetooth, Zigbee etc. This data is further sent to

database for storage so that a person can have a track on recorded data. Also the data

reaches remote server from where it is sent to the healthcare service provider or the

doctor as and when required for close clinical observation. This data can also be sent

to family and friends as per the user requirement and convenience for emergency use.

These days cloud computing [13] and Internet of Things are enabling ubiquitous

availability of data for mobile health care applications. Whenever the examined data

is not lying between the previously defined threshold range, i.e., not within prior set

minimum and maximum values, an automatic alarm is generated at healthcare

locations indicating an emergency case so that necessary actions can be taken on time

and immediate care can be provided to the patient at the earliest. This architecture

also provides a feedback to the user making the system function as a closed loop.

Thus, the user can receive timely feedback from the doctor in immediate cases

such as a change in prescription, change in exercise routines or other preventive or

curative measures.

4. HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS

Being the rapidly emerging and promising field, many prototypes have been

developed for health and physical activity monitoring using non- invasive wearable

sensors for all age groups.

A large amount of work has been done to monitor physiological signals and

activity [8-10].Some of the recent research trends are mentioned below.



Table 2: Recent research trends in mobile health monitoring using non -invasive wearable

sensors

Title Target Hardwa Parameters Sensors used Communication

re measured Protocol

platfor m

Breathing feedback Wearable textile sensor Arduino Joint Wearable textile Dig iXbee

system with wearab le used to

monitor movement, sensor using a

text ile sensors breathing patterns

for breathing piezoresistive

performing prescribed rates material

exercises correctly

iCalm: Wearable Wireless sensor platform Atmel Skin EDA, blood IEEE 802.15.4 sensor and network for continuous long term Atmega conductance volume wireless

architecture for monitoring of autonomic 328 , pulse(BVP),temp standard

wirelessly nervous system and microco heart rate erature sensor,

communicat ing and motion data ntroller variability motion sensor

logging automatic (HRV)

activity[11]

An electronic gadget Assistive technology for Arduino Heart rate, Photoplethysmog Bluetooth

for Ho me-bound elderly body raphy,Temperatur

Patients and temperature, e sensor, tri-axis

Elders[16] tilt and fall accelero meter

Real life applicable Fall detectio

n system MSP43 Behavior 3-axial CC2420

fall detection system using sensor in worn and posture accelero meter,3-

based on wireless necklace fo rm monitoring axial gyroscope

body area

network[10]

WECARE: An mhealth tool for the ARM ECG data 7-lead ECG WCDMA or intelligent mobile cardiovascular disease micropr devices LTE-Advanced telecardiology system diagnosis and treatment ocessor networks

to enable mhealth STM 32

applications[12]

Wearable sensors and Model for monitoring Arduino Body Temperature Zigbee, cloud

cloud platform for the health conditio

n of Pro temperature, sensor, humidity computing monitoring the patients Mini air hu midity sensor

environmental

parameters in E-

health

applications[13]

Health monitoring systems using non-invasive wearable sensors have been largely

appreciated since last decade. It has attracted people from all research fields due to its

efficient, low-cost, promising widespread application in healthcare, beneficial for both

physicians and patients. In spite of all these positive aspects, these systems have not

yet been deployed or adopted as a total healthcare alternative to the conventional

hospital environment. These systems need to overcome the challenges in fields like

enhancement of battery life, energy efficiency, interoperability, limited storage space,

scalability, security and privacy. To be a reality on larger scale, these systems need to

feasible for large scale manufacturing & deployment. This requires a broad number of



experiments to be carried out in addition to the deployment tests in real life scenarios

to convert mobile health monitoring systems into efficient and practically acceptable

systems which are seamlessly integrated with the human world.

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mHEALTH: REVIEW OF MOBILE HEALTH MONITORING SYSTEMS