IoT-Based system to monitor health conditions of eldery people in Rwanda

Abstract

The rapid increase in number of the old adults in developed countries has raised concerns about their well-being and increased needs for healthcare services. Elderly people faces different oldage related diseases such as Cancer, Alzheimer, cardiovascular, blood pressure and sugar level problems where some of such diseases transform into chronic diseases. However, without assistance, aged persons are helpless. Even informing someone about their health issues is challenge for them. In developing countries new technologies, including internet of things, are being used to monitor old adults’ health and activities, thus enable them to live safe and independently at home as they age. This study aimed at designing and prototype a system intended to help improve health of elderly people in Sub-Saharan Africa. This can be achieved by providing a relatively easy way to monitor the health of elderly people remotely and provide vital signs information of elderly people periodically with automatic alerts in case of emergency issue and tracking the location of elderly people. Therefore architecture for context awareness and IoT- based system is proposed to improve health monitoring of elderly people in Africa and thus improve the quality of life of elderly people. The system use heart beat sensor, Temperature sensor and GPS Module to collect data with Arduino Uno as Microcontroller. The collected data is send to the cloud using GSM Module. The cloud data is stored, processed, analyzed and then sends to the caregiver and Doctor. The use of this system will help elderly people to get real time health status and medicine anywhere by ensuring a timely response in case of emergency, thus improve their quality of live. Lastly the system will help caregivers and doctors to monitor elderly people remotely thus improve health worker productivity, reduce consultation time and overall healthcare cost.