Advances in Parallel Computing Technologies and Applications 193

D.J. Hemanth et al. (Eds.)

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This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
doi:10.3233/APC210140

IoT Based Health Monitoring System

Jayakumar S a,1 , Ranjith kumar R b , Tejswini R b and Kavil S b
a Assistant Professor (S.G), Department of Electronics and Instrumentation

Engineering, KCG college of technology, Chennai

b Students, Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, KCG college of

technology, Chennai

Abstract. Normally, a health issue or an emergency needs to viewed in a multi-

disciplinary approach. And, thus a standard sensor-based diagnosis in the medical
field, requires a greater number of sensors and human efforts if it’s processed on a
large scale. To overcome this issue an IoT-based health care application is proposed
in this research work. The proposed system consists of an online mobile application
that supports continuous wireless monitoring of patients. The Main aim of the paper
is to implement a low-cost system and send the patient vital parameters in case of
emergency situations. Sensors such as ECG Monitor sensor, Heart Rate sensor, and
temperature sensor are used to quantify the patient vital signs. The sensor data are
collected and transferred to the cloud for storage of the IoT platform via a module
which is connected to the micro controller. The information is processed within
the cloud and the appropriate feedback steps are taken on the analyzed data which
may be further analyzed by a doctor remotely in person. Remote viewing reduces
the burden to doctors and also provides the precise health status of patients. If the
patient needs urgent attention, then a message alerts is sent to the care taker or
doctor. This kind of mechanism helps in taking precautions beforehand and also
helps the doctor to analyze the patient in a better way. The setup is verified using
simulation and various test experiments.

Keywords. Health care system, IoT, sensors, IoT platform, Arduino.

1. Introduction

In the rural areas, as of our survey, there’s a scarcity of proper health treatments for the
people, and that they don’t find the proper quality of treatment. Widely, people get the
treatment after the disease has affected their body to the where it gets very critical. Mean-
while, while considering the value of treatment also many of the agricultural people,
mostly farmers cannot afford it.
Thus, to act as a much easier treatment process, we have designed our project in a
minimalistic form but much more effective. This project is meant to offer a major param-
eter to diagnose the disease. The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly growing attention
not only in certain fields but much more, especially in personalized healthcare [1–5].
Medical scientists and researchers, work hard within the field of innovation and research
for many decades to urge better health services and happiness in human lives [6, 7]. The
1 Jaykumar S, Department of EIE, KCG college of technology, Chennai, India.
E-mail: [Link]@[Link].
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blood heat, pulse, vital signs, respiration rate are the most vital parameters to diagnose
a disease. This project gives temperature and pulse values using sensors and these data
can be viewed efficiently with the help of the IoT platform-ThingSpeak.

2. Literature Survey

The literature review of the paper that were referenced and those that serves the base
paper and supporting paper which provides the clear idea of the healthcare system and
machine learning algorithms and proper method of recommendations.
Shoban Babu et al. [8] has put forward a concept where a patient’s health is moni-
tored efficiently with the help of IoT. It is primarily used to discover a patient’s disorder
and it provides a suitable remedy for the recovery of patient’s health. IoT also helps in
alarming the peers in the event of sensing an abnormality by the help of various sensors
setup.
Sreekanth et al. [9] discuss on collection and transferring of a data in the cloud. The
sensed data is then processed by the microcontroller however there is no proper method
to send the data or to classify the data according to the patients.
Wan et al. [10] has designed the IoT Based Patient Health Monitoring System. In
this, the wireless sensors from different parts of the body are interlinked to the node
and then connected to the server. But the downside of this work is that the sensors are
wireless and the data derived across the sensors can be uncertain.
Valsalan P et al. [11] used only Arduino to operate the data which collects data
across the sensors and these are stored and then transferred to the database to access them
for future purpose. They didn’t create a EMR profile for patients, which is used to record
the patient’s information that can be easily accessed by anyone.
Yeri V et al. [12] proposed an idea about monitoring the body condition of the pa-
tients from anywhere in the world. But they didn’t use RFID tag for the sensors to col-
lects the patient’s body information in a particular manner. The main drawback is that the
data across the sensors which is transferred to the database is not proper and it’s difficult
to access them at any instant of time and lack of documentation.

3. Methodology

The Table 1 show the hardware components used to develop a device. In this Arduino
UNO is the microprocessor, Max30100, Ec0567, Ad8232 are the sensor that are con-
nected in the human body. The LCD used for the display

3.1. Hardware parts

3.1.1. Esp8266 Module

The development board consisting of the ESP-12E module is incorporated with the
ESP8266 chip having 32-bit LX106 RISC microprocessor. The Board operates at a
clock frequency of 80MHz to 160 MHz. Most of the IoT projects commonly use the
NodeMCU module which is capable of storing data and programs in its 4MB flash mem-
ory. NodeMCU is powered through a micro-USB inlet and has inbuilt Wi-Fi support. It
supports UART, SPI, and I2C interface.
 Jayakumar S et al. / IoT Based Health Monitoring System 195

Figure 1. Methodology of the system

Table 1. Hardware Components Description

S. Name of the components Description
No
1 ESP8266 Send data to the MySQL Database through Wi-Fi module.
2 MAX30100 Pulse oximeter sensor Sensor used to sense the blood oxygen level in body.
3 Arduino UNO R3 This microcontroller board is used to Reads the data from the
sensors.
4 EC-0567 heart sensor Detects the heart rate of the human body.
5 AD-8232 ECG Monitor sensor Sense the pulse rate and gives the ouput is in the waveform
(ECG wave).
6 LM35 Sensor used to measure the body temperature.
7 Thing speak It stores and retrive the data sensed by the sensors.

3.1.2. Arduino Uno

It is one of the most commonly used microcontroller boards named ATmega328P. This
UNO board consists of 14 digital Input and output pins, 6 analog inputs, one USB con-
nection, a single power channel, and a reset button. The Arduino board can be powered
via USB cable by connecting to the computer or by using an AC-to-DC adapter.

3.1.3. Heart Rate Sensor

The heart sensor measures pulse rate, which is the changes in the volume of a blood
vessel that occurs when the heart pumps the blood. The heart rate sensor is reliable. The
live heart rate data can be viewed on the display. Pulse Sensor has an inbuilt amplification
and noise cancellation circuit in the hardware. The data can be read faster and easier.
Pulse Sensor works on either a 3V or 5V DC power supply. It can be plugged straight
into a NodeMCU or a Breadboard.

3.1.4. ECG Monitor Sensor

It is integrated by a single chip which is specially designed for extraction, amplification,
and filtering the bipotential signals. It consists of three leads that act as an operational
196 Jayakumar S et al. / IoT Based Health Monitoring System

Figure 2. ESP8266

Figure 3. Arduino UNO Figure 4. Hear rate sensor

amplifier to get a clear signal. The ECG signals obtained from the patient contain more
noise at the output side. In order, to overcome this issue an operational amplifier is used
in the module which helps in obtaining a clear output signal.

3.1.5. LM 35 Temperature Sensor

A temperature sensor is used to detect the body temperature. It can measure the tempera-
ture in the range of -55 degrees centigrade to 150-degree centigrade. The accuracy range
of the temperature sensor is high when operated at optimal temperature and humidity
level. The input voltage on the sensor varies from 4v to 30v and also consumes a current
of 50Ma.

3.1.6. Thing Speak (IoT Platform)

It is an open IoT platform used to transfer data from any Internet-enabled device to
the cloud. By configuring various actions and alerts it supports your real-time data and
unlocks your data using visual tools. Think speak helps the developers to a great extent
by capturing the sensor data and convert it into useful information. Thing Speak server is
an open service that is free of cost and helps the development of the small noncommercial
project.
 Jayakumar S et al. / IoT Based Health Monitoring System 197

Figure 5. ECG monitor sensor Figure 6. Pulse oximeter

Figure 7. Overview of ThingSpeak

4. Architecture of the Health Monitoring system

In this system, the sensors are collecting the health data from the patients for data acqui-
sition. Communications in the hardware part can be done by Arduino UNO and ESP8266
module for sending data to the server. The ThingSpeak server can be identified with the
help of an API key. Data processing is done at the ThingSpeak server. the sensed data are
stored in the database of the ThingSpeak. If patients want to know their health-related
information’s was shown on the web page of the Thing speak. Here Thing speak plays
and Arduino UNO plays the major role. Because the Arduino collects the data from each
sensor. And transfer to the thing speak IoT platform. With the use of an API key, we can
transfer the data to the specified space in the cloud. Here we can access these data at
times and also documentation available. We can download the data in .CSV format. But
in the free version, we can only access some limited storage.
The hardware part shows the accurate results of the vitals of the patient as shown
in above Figure 8. the sensor senses the data from the patient body. The Node MCU
helps to process the data and sent it to the Thing speak cloud. If any parameter value
crossed the threshold value the sensor reading is changed into red color and indicating
to the doctor of an emergency situation in which the patient goes to an abnormal state
which requires immediate assistance to the patient. The patient can move freely if the
198 Jayakumar S et al. / IoT Based Health Monitoring System

Figure 8. Block diagram

patient wants. The processor processes the data sensed by the sensors and processed data
transferred to the ThingSpeak cloud through the ESP8266 module. The sensed data from
the patient body can be seen on the webpage using the PC or mobile. The sensors sense
and transfer the data every 20seconds. if any data of the vital parameters of the patient
will exceed the threshold values, then the doctor will receive an alert message. So, he
will take immediate action to the patient.

5. Results

This hardware setup basically consists of Heart Rate sensor, ECG Monitor sensor, Tem-
perature sensor. These sensors are used to measure and monitor the values of pulse and
temperature. After the values are found out the data is sent to the micro controller. The
micro controller takes the necessary action and decides on sending the data. The data is
sent using a Wi-Fi Module and it is stored in ThingSpeak.

Figure 9. Hardware setup Figure 10. Simulation on Arduino IDE

In order to analyse the sensors and test our sensors we have used a software called
Arduino IDE which is the only software that supports our micro controller. The above
 Jayakumar S et al. / IoT Based Health Monitoring System 199

Figure 11. Graph on Temperature sensor out-

put Figure 12. Graph on Heart rate sensor output

Figure 13. Graph on ECG sensor output

figure, denotes the simulations performed during testing platforms. In order to analyse
the sensors and test our sensors we have used a software called Arduino IDE which
is the only software that supports our micro controller. The above figure, denotes the
simulations performed during testing platforms. The heart rate values are sent to the
cloud platform called ThingSpeak and the values are continuously monitored and stored.
The above figure depicts the fluctuations in temperature of the patient and it can be
monitored by the doctor any time. The Electro Cardiogram signals are sent to the cloud
platform called ThingSpeak and the values are continuously monitored and stored. The
above figure depicts the fluctuations in temperature of the patient and it can be monitored
by the doctor any time.

6. Conclusion and future work

The Human services field is always containing a huge measure of medical data, for han-
dling those medical information certain methods are utilized. processing is one altogether
method that is regularly utilized by the experts in this field. This paper focuses on the
important time data for more accurate prediction using IoT. The predicted info is ob-
served within the google sheet. Further, It will be very helpful for the villages people
200 Jayakumar S et al. / IoT Based Health Monitoring System

for mass screening system where hospital facilities are not available like in rural areas.
In future work, we will add some additional Features like automatic and ease of Use,
of The Patient Having Other Kinds of Diseases Too. In order to add machine learning
is used to predict the disease and giving some helpful recommendations to the patients
whether the body is in the normal state or abnormal state. To Make Use of Smaller and
Light Weight Sensors in the Wearable Device in Order to Measure Number of Parameters
Hence Making the Classification of Diseases More Accurate and Precise.

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