Monitoring and analysis of coma patients using wearable sensor system and WSN

Abstract

Coma patients undergo changes that may be either abnormal behaviour or unusual changes in the absence of doctor. It is necessary to monitor the unconscious/coma patients continuously to understand their health condition. The main objective is to accomplish two tasks. 1) Monitoring the coma patient using motion detection system and displaying the results. 2) Continuous recording and analysis of vital signals of the patient such as heartbeat and temperature and alert the doctor whenever attention is needed. Wearable Motion sensor system is used to monitor the body movements such as eye blink movement (using eye blink sensor), hand movement (using flex sensor) and body movement (using Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) sensor) to detect the conscious state of an individual. In addition, a heartbeat sensor and temperature sensor are used to detect vital signals. ARM (Advanced RISC Machine) microcontroller is used to manage the functioning of the sensor system. The project will be helpful in assisting the doctor about the health condition of the unconscious patients and alerting the doctor whenever care is required. The proposed system will assist the doctor by giving an alarm about the health condition of the patient, if there is any movement in the patient or if the set of vital signals recorded are out of the normal range. These results are displayed on the computer and on the Liquid Crystal Display (LCD). In addition, alert messages are sent to the concerned doctor.