Wireless Sensor Network Based Health Monitoring System for Hypertensive In-Patients

Hypertensive-patient monitoring is a continuous process of observing closely the situation of patient's blood pressure and alerting the appropriate personnel in case of any anomaly. It usually requires the use of non-invasive sensors that are hardwired to bedside monitors. Although, present systems allow continuous monitoring of patient vital signs and limit the patient to the bed, the readings are mostly stored on the system local memory over a period of time before it is assessed for analysis. Hence, the need for a real time hypertensive patients’ monitoring system which can meet up with immediate demands of emergency cases. This paper presents a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)-based health monitoring system that addressed the aforementioned drawbacks for monitoring hypertensive in-patients. The design of the system comprises of hardware components such as blood pressure sensor, Bluetooth serial communication circuit, sensor node for base station interfaces and software components. Performance evaluation of the designed system gave an accuracy of 89.7% in blood pressure monitoring. The system is also cost effective, reliable and user friendly when compared with existing systems. Keywords — Blood Pressure, Health monitoring, Hypertension, Wireless Sensor Networks