PulseStream: A Personal Healthcare Monitoring Application

PulseStream: A Personal Healthcare Monitoring Application

ABSTRACT

Traditional healthcare monitoring methods have several drawbacks in this day and age, particularly concerning individuals who suffer from arrhythmia related medical conditions. For instance, a diabetic patient often has the limited choice of either, voyagmg to their designated healthcare facility for frequent check-ups, or purchasing expensive and invasive home use test kits which lead to tens of thousands in costs. The goal of this project is to develop a prototype of a personal health monitoring application that is able to detect pulse rate and determine the heartrate of a human via a smartphone. This would be achieved by using a method known as Photoplethysmography (PPG). PPG is a non-invasive technology that uses a light source and a photodetector at the surface of skin to measure the volumetric variations of blood circulation. The process involves the user placing their finger onto a sensor (camera or dedicated sensor) to read the pulse rate into the application which processes it and derives the user’s heartrate. The user is notified whether their heart rate is at optimum levels or if there should be cause for concern. Lastly, the successfully completed system is able to record and analyse the users pulse rate of a human body and display the appropriate results on a smartphone with accuracy and precision.

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1     Overview

The health monitoring application is designed to aid individuals suffering from arrhythmia (irregular or abnormal heartbeat) in monitoring the state of their health condition. The system which is a mobile application collects user data, in this case their pulse via a method called Photoplethysmography (PPG), which is a simple and low-cost optical technique that is used to detect blood volume changes in the microvascular bed of tissue. Collected data is processed to derive the users heart rate and displays an accurate result.

You’ve probably seen or know of devices that people clip to their fingers in hospitals that measure their heart rate, or smartwatches capable of measuring your heart rate. They all have one thing in common: They measure the heart rate using the same technique called photoplethysmography. This application mms to deliver an easier, affordable and non-invasive alternative by making use of a smartphone.

1.2 Background and Motivation

Arrythmia solutions available to the average Nigerian for monitoring their health conditions are often expensive, invasive or counterintuitive. A diabetic patient often has the limited choice of either, voyaging to their designated healthcare facility for frequent checkups, or purchasing expensive and invasive home use test kits which lead to tens of thousands in costs. With ensuing factors such as the recent pandemic and the harrowing economic calamities facing the country, I discovered there was an imminent need for a better solution to healthcare monitoring.

At present as the ubiquitous technology such as smart-phones rapidly evolve and the burden on limited medical resources increases, there is a need for a low-cost physiological measurement solution which is accurate and its use is not limited to the clinical environment only. Smart-phones are becoming very popular and their performances are being improved rapidly. They have the ability to monitor a patient’s physiological and vital signals by a remote, non-contact method which is an exciting idea that would improve the delivery of primary healthcare. Smart-phones can now enable long-term monitoring of other physiological signals such as heart rate or respiratory rate by acquiring them continuously in an unobtrusive, comfortable manner which requires a lot of attention that would prove to be as reliable as the standard clinical machine, i.e., the ECG. Therefore, there is a great demand for further research in this field to figure out the problems and solutions focusmg on the limitations they impose on accuracy.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

More Nigerians today have access to the internet than to a dedicated healthcare provider, and by 2025 there would be more Nigerians with access to a smartphone than access to adequate healthcare. Welcome M. O. (2011). Available health monitoring solutions are unsuitable for the current needs of the Nigerian society and this is due to factors including distance, time, convenience and money create a situation which is unconducive for patients that are in need of such services. This project intends to deliver a low-cost platform, able to produce results in real time, at any time or place.

1.4 Aim and Objectives

The aim is to design a prototype of a personal monitor health that is able to:

• Allow users to non-invasively scan their pulse.
• Allow users to measure their heart rate.
• To give users an understanding of their current health status.
• Display the users heart rate.
• Record heartrate measurements over time, Help users to keep track of their health

1.5 Significance of the Project

The execution of the project fills a void in the Nigerian healthcare monitoring space. This project has the potential to help millions of people suffering from arrhythmia related conditions, people affected by diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension e.t.c would benefit greatly from this project.

mHealth or mobile health is a new term that has come to the brim in the last few years. This shows the ideal combination of technology and the healthcare sector to build healthcare applications that are a need of the present time. These applications help users collect and monitor clinical data and community data collected in real-time of the patients by the healthcare providers.

Over the last few years, a large number of such applications have been built across the globe in order to offer better care to the patients or users. Some focus on offering direct contact to the doctors, building customized meal plans, planning workout regimes, monitoring health parameters.

The devices we wield in our hands are powerful tools that are capable of so much that we sometimes forget. This project shows how the lives of everyday people can be positively impacted by computer science and technology. It is a positive endeavor which can aid aspiring developers to gain insights and understanding in this field of science.

1.6 Project Risks Assessment

RISKS

Inability to carry out research due to loss of hardware/software resources	Be aware of and observe school IT security procedures Secure laptop and Android mobile phone when not In use.
Loss of work due to equipment failure /loss	Constant data backup to flash drive and cloud storage.
Software availability (Unavailability of API’s)	Alternative API’s will be checked for. Software requirements will be identified in good time for ossible contentious software
Software de recation.	Mi ation and u ade of acka es will be done.

1.7 Scope/Project Organization

The procedures used for measuring heart rates by a smart phone application will be examined and compared to traditional methods and devices used in measuring vital readings in order to assess its accuracy level. Further, an analysis will be performed on the data collected in order to identify a set of potential room conditions and parameters that affect directly the performance and accuracy ofthe application. Finally, I propose a mobile phone application for monitoring the heart rate of an individual.

The chapters of this documentation will be organized as follows:

Chapter I- Introduction — A brief introduction to the work is focused on. In this chapter the problem that I aim to resolve is outlined, project goals, scope of the work and the structure of our work.

Chapter 2 — Literature Review — The related work that was performed by other researches within areas that are related to this work. In this chapter I gather different approaches behind the mobile applications for retrieving heart rate measurements, facts and conclusions that were drawn from different studies.

Chapter 3 — Requirements. Analysis and Design — In this chapter I break down and explain the methodology and requirements adopted for proceeding with this project. In here, I explain how I performed the searching and selections of articles for the literature review and introduce the part of our methodology, which is an experiment.

Chapter 4 — Implementation and Testing— In this chapter we dig into the details of the Implementations that conducted as part of this work. I discuss about the target subjects, the hardware that I used, the procedure followed for collecting the data and the parameters of the projects and performing testing.

Chapter 5 —Discussion, Conclusions and Recommendations — In this chapter, I discuss the results of the project. In here I consider how close the measurements are in order to check the levels of accuracy that can be obtained by the smart phone application. I discuss the conclusions drawn out of this study. Specifically, the factors that may influence the performance of the heart rate application and factors that may lead to total malfunctioning.

PulseStream: A Personal Healthcare Monitoring Application

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