A secure patient monitoring and tracking system using RFID and internet of things for the university teaching hospital

Abstract

In the present era, quality and affordable patient health care is now the main concern for hospitals in Zambia. Hospitals have to accept the obligation of the patient safety and the patient’s well-being. However, due to the congested and understaffed hospitals in Zambia with intricate work procedure patterns, the healthcare system has seen a rise of different types of medical errors. With the advance in medical technology, medical care errors such as wrong medication, miss-placement of medical files and patient miss-identification can be radically reduced. Internet of Things (IoT) has improved the advancement of conventional medical model towards healthcare by the introduction of remote health monitoring using sensors (wearable, environmental and implanted) with the purpose of monitoring the user’s health within or outside the hospital. Hence the supply of valuable set of data, in real time mode significant to the stakeholders (patient and medical staff) using electronic form (technology) is called E-health. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that is used as a physical layer of IoT system for remote tracking and monitoring because of its minimal efforts and affordable sensors. It’s also known for providing unique ID numbers. A monitoring and tracking system was developed using passive RFID tags, temperature and heart beat sensors integrated on Arduino controller boards. The software component of the system was enhanced by Gecko and Arduino open source applications. The patient was provided with unique RFID number and details regarding the patient and treatment were stored in a centralized database which was retrieved by the server. The proposed system was designed to monitor and track patients online. The adopted communication technologies in this study were 4G internet and Wi-Fi. The proposed application can be used to identify and monitor the patients inside a closed environment. Key words: Internet of Things (IoT), RFID, Tag, Monitoring, E-health, Tracking