Smart health care framework for ambulances

Healthcare in Pakistan currently ranks 154th out of 195 countries in terms of overall system performance. Emergency Care System is the gateway of our health system. In the absence of pre-hospital treatment in Pakistan, emergency rooms may be the first point of contact for many patients with acu

Project Title

Smart health care framework for ambulances

Project Area of Specialization

Biomedical Engineering

Project Summary

Healthcare in Pakistan currently ranks 154th out of 195 countries in terms of overall system performance. Emergency Care System is the gateway of our health system. In the absence of pre-hospital treatment in Pakistan, emergency rooms may be the first point of contact for many patients with acute illnesses or complications of health problems. According to the National Health Care Act 2017, every patient has the right to receive life-saving care without advance payment for treatment. In Pakistan, thousands of people die every year due to a lack of on-time treatment.

Various factors are responsible for poor health system in Pakistan:

1. Lack of pre-hospital treatment
2. The ambulances that are taking the patients to the hospital are not well equipped.
3. Lack of communication between doctors and patients.
4. Unavailability of patient monitoring and diagnostic facilities in ambulances

If the patient makes it to the hospital, the critical time that is important for the patient is wasted in taking the tests of vital signs. The other reason for this high death toll is the large number of patients that are being treated at a time, due to which lots of time is wasted. So, to improve our health care system, we have designed low-cost patient monitoring and diagnostic system. This system is mainly comprises of three parts as Acquiring data, data processing, and knowledge and action. Firstly, the sensors were attached on the patient’s body to get the bio-vital signs. These sensors include ECG, temperature and SpO2 sensors. The sensors integrated with Arduino were attached to the patient’s body. Run time, the ECG taken with three-lead ECG clip electrode is converted to .csv file to display the signal in python. The results then displayed on LCD.

Figure 1. Low-cost and smart system for diagnosis and monitoring for fatal diseases.

This intelligence based health care framework that is smart and low cost would give us following benefits to improve health care system.

1. The system would be capable enough to decide that either patient is normal or has an abnormality in acquired vital signals.
2. The system would show the results of vital signals and generate alerts in case of abnormalities.
3. The system would have the capability to communicate the results of vital signals to the hospitals before the patient reaches the hospital so that necessary action can be planned to save the patient's life in dangerous conditions.
4. The system can diagnose CVDs without the presence of clinical experts.

Flow chart of the project to describe the working and integration of its different parts is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Integration and working of different parts of the project.

Project Objectives

Pakistan is a nation that has made economic progress but is struggling to find a road towards sustainable development. The health statement in Pakistan is high incidence of infection and communicable diseases. Healthcare optimization has become increasingly important in the current era, where numerous challenges are posed by population ageing phenomena and the demand for higher quality of the healthcare services. This project may play vital role in saving the patient life at emergency time. Main objectives of health system are to improve health of the population, fairness in financing and provide pre-hospital treatment.

Figure 3. Targeted potential healthcare problems.

We have designed a Low-cost and smart system for early diagnosis and monitoring for fatal diseases which mainly include heart diseases. This intelligent healthcare system measure patient’s vital signs using ECG, temperature and SpO2 sensor. These vital signs are displayed on the screen of ambulance. After that Patient’s real time data will be transferred to nearby hospitals for treatment. Transmission of bio-signals from the accident site or the moving ambulance to the consultation site, using the mobile app. There, the experts will evaluate the patient’s data and decide about the treatment protocol and provide directions to the ambulance's medical staff concerning on the patient handling until the arrival to the hospital.

The project would be designed by focusing on the cost and usability so that it would be in reach of everyone as easiest and nearest as possible and user friendly. In addition to that we are focusing on establishing a 24-hr link between patient and doctor so that there would be lesser deaths due to shortage of time, transportation, non-availability of hospitals and money. Most importantly, serving our country by making the lives of its citizens more secure in the wake of creating a better future.

 Quantifiable objective of our project is:

1. Development of low-cost patient monitoring and diagnostic system would be useful for its deployment for Ambulances, Remote Area, Healthcare centers and Telemedicine
2. To develop a setup to process the acquired data of sensors
3. Measure patient’s vital signs using ECG, temperature and SpO2 sensor.
4. Patient’s real time data will be transferred to nearby hospitals for treatment.
5. Development of linkage between the ambulances and hospital
6. Development of linkage between ambulance and family of patient

Project Implementation Method

The working of our project is divided into three main parts. Data acquisition, data processing, and displaying the result. Firstly, for data acquisition, the sensors were selected. For our project, we are dealing with three sensors which are an oxygen concentration sensor, temperature sensor, and ECG sensor. The sensors were finalized by studying the literature. The sensors were selected based on how economical they were, their precision, and their capability toward integration. The next step was the integration of sensors with the Arduino for acquiring data. The precision of sensors was checked and in case of any calibration needed, the sensors were calibrated. As we are monitoring the vital sign of the patients in our project the first sensor we worked on was the ECG sensor in which data was acquired using 1 lead and 3 electrodes ECG sensor. The data for ECG was obtained using Arduino and the obtained ECG signal was converted into. CSV file for processing in python. After that data was acquired we moved to pre-process the data that included noise removal and filtration of our ECG signal. The post-processing of our project included working on the characterization of ECG as normal or bradycardiac or tachycardiac. In parallel, we were working on acquiring data from temperature sensors and oxygen concentration sensors. The sensors were integrated with Arduino UNO and the results for the temperature of the patient and oxygen concentration of the patient were obtained and displayed on the serial monitor of Arduino. A body temperature greater than 37°C, and oxygen concentration greater than 99% was declared abnormal. The last step of our project which we are currently working on is communicating these results to the hospital/doctors and the family of the patient in an understandable way so that a common person can understand it. The projects also include the integration of the system into the ambulance system so that in the worst conditions the patient would easily be transferred to the nearest hospitals in an emergency condition. We are working on the implementation of different parts of projects in parallel. The overall flow chart of the implementation of the projects from start to the completion with all steps in a sequential manner is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Flowchart for the implementation of the development of Smart Healthcare Framework for Ambulances.

Benefits of the Project

The purpose of designing this project is that as we know for many health care systems in developing countries, the provisions for timely treatment of life-threatening emergencies have not been of priority. It is important to strengthen the emergency response systems for medical care in these countries. The rate of life-threatening diseases is increasing day by day. Moreover, the underdeveloped and sourced health care system, primarily, in third world countries is not sufficient to cope with these problems. According to the survey done recently Healthcare in Pakistan currently ranks 154th out of 195 countries in terms of overall system performance. In Pakistan, thousands of people die every year due to a lack of on-time treatment. Moreover, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2002 wherein 33.5% of deaths are due to cardiac, tuberculosis, road accidents, and lower respiratory problems while 66.5% are due to various other diseases or infections. The health care system of third-world countries is not developed enough to efficiently diagnose and treat such ailments. The health care system of Pakistan also suffers from the same shortcomings. Even basic diagnostic facilities are not available in large parts of rural Pakistan. There is a dire need for low-cost diagnostic tools for such communities all around third-world countries. In this regard, we are looking to develop a low-cost and smart diagnostic system for heart diseases, blood pressure, and oxygen concentration. To overcome these health problems, the concept of a cost-effective and smart healthcare monitoring system for ambulances has been designed to promote interaction between all parties in the healthcare field, ensure that participants get the services they need, help the parties make informed decisions, and facilitate the rational allocation of resources. This project can benefit the society in the following ways:

 1. The availability of smart and low-cost health monitoring systems in ambulances be beneficial to the community by timely diagnostics and recommended treatments during their transfer towards developed hospitals.  

2. The availability of smart ambulance system would improve the life of people because of pre hospital testing and diagnosis. 

 3. Early diagnosis of fatal heart diseases like CVDs would save the preventable life loss during transfer of patients.

4. The project would be easy to use so that a layman can use it on its own for monitoring and testing heart and blood-related parameters and it would reduce the non-availability of health care staff and professionals.

5. The ambulance system would be integrated to physician for emergency conditions so that timely measures could be taken to rescue the patients from severe conditions.

6. Last but not least; owing to the development of decision system to diagnose, we believe our project will be able to save numerous lives by promptly intimating them in critical times.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

In this project, we would develop a smart framework and system for health monitoring in ambulances to be used for the early diagnosis, disease monitoring, and emergency alerts of fatal diseases; and communication these results to nearby hospitals and families of patients. The system would consist of low-cost sensors for diagnosis of blood oxygen concentration, body temperature, and heart diseases to resolve the issue of non-availability of early and swear condition diagnostics equipment in the majority of our rural, basic, remote area and private health care centers. The availability of early diagnosis at basic and local healthcare centers would decrease the pressure on non-swear personnel from the hospitals and would save lives. The system would consist of an easy-to-use mobile interface integrated with sensors through a microprocessor. The sensor would communicate with the microprocessor and feed it with real-time data about the patient. The real-time data would be processed at a microprocessor through different algorithms of pre-and post-processing to obtain the useful data from the input at a real-time scale. The monitored parameters of diseases would be displayed on the screen/LCD/monitor for on-spot monitoring. An app would also be developed to monitor the microprocessor's processed data. To understand the result obtained from the system to a layman, we would use alarms and colors for different indications of diseases under different conditions such as normal, diseased/unhealthy, and swear. The system would include an emergency system embedded into it. The emergency system intelligently decides whether the patient required emergency treatment or not based on the results of tests obtained from the sensors. In case of a swear condition, the system would automatically send an alert to the relatives of the patient, the nearest hospitals to take necessary measures, and the ambulance system. The system would also include an option that if the patient is unhealthy and she/he wants to consult with the physician through a telemedicine platform then he would be able to share his test results with the physician from the diseased monitoring app and the physician can suggest the necessary measures to the patient by seeing its results in pictures. The list of deliverables is the following:

1. Development of low-cost patient monitoring and diagnostic system. This system would be useful for its deployment for Ambulances, Remote Area, Healthcare centers and Telemedicine.
2. Low-cost and smart system of sensors and microprocessors for disease diagnosis and monitoring system with an easy-to-use interface.
3. Development of linkage between the ambulances and hospital.
4. Development of linkage between ambulance and family of patient.
5. Disease emergency alert system for severe and emergency conditions in integration with sensors and microprocessor.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

Health

Other Industries

IT , Medical

Core Technology

Others

Other Technologies

Internet of Things (IoT)

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People, Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com