An advanced neuro-physiological healthcare system

Many do not realise the importance of good health, and even if they do, they may still disregard it. Whether we work at home or in an office, we need good health to perform our duties. Health is an important factor, in recent years; sensors are used in each and every fast developing application for designing the miniaturised system which is much easier for people to use.

Remote health monitoring messenger helps reduce patients inconvenience to travel to hospitals due to ailing health. The rapid evolution of electronics and information technology is resulting in powerful patient monitors capable of complex bio signal processing and interpretation, usually equipped with some specialised communication interface.

Patient monitors are the most important diagnostic devices in the critical care units (CCUs) providing continuous display and interpretation of the patient’s vital functions. In order to provide a new healthcare system to patients, a real time monitoring device at low cost has been developed for providing accurate information. The proposed system defines various medical applications such as electroencephalogram (EEG), electrooculography (EOG/E.O.G), spo2, GSM based heartbeat monitoring system.

The proposed healthcare system gives information about the patient’s vital functions similar to diagnostic devices. This prototype involves four modules where these units are inbuilt into one to perform the desired function of health monitoring system. Firstly, EEG is widely used in applications to record the brain's spontaneous electrical activity over a period of time. Intensive care units (ICUs) are widely equipped with EEG devices to monitor the state of a patient’s brain.

Electroencephalography is a medical imaging technique that reads scalp electrical activity generated by brain structures. The electroencephalogram (EEG) is defined as electrical activity of an alternating type recorded from the scalp surface. Next is the electrooculogram (EOG), it is the electrical signal produced by the potential difference between the retina and the cornea of the eye. It is a technique used for measuring the corneo-retinal standing potential of the human eye.

This difference is due to the large presence of electrically active nerves in the retina compared to the front of the eye. Eye movement data is recorded using an electrooculography (EOG) system in voltages and the scale of a normal person is 3.2 V and beyond that it is considered abnormal.

Pulse oximetry is a procedure used to measure the oxygen level (or oxygen saturation) in the blood. It is considered to be a noninvasive, painless, general indicator of oxygen delivery to the peripheral tissues (such as the finger, earlobe, or nose).Pulse oximetry is a non-invasive method for monitoring a patient’s oxygen saturation A sensor is placed on a thin part of the patient's body, usually a fingertip or earlobe, or in the case of an infant, across a foot.

Pulse oximetry is a convenient non-invasive measurement method. Typically it utilises a pair of small light-emitting diodes (LEDs) facing a photodiode through a translucent part of the patient's body. For a normal person it should be 96%. Heart beat is sensed by using a high intensity type LED and LDR. As sensor, a photo diode or a photo transistor can be used. The skin may be illuminated with visible red using transmitted or reflected light for detection.