CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Telemedicine is the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patient's health status. Telemedicine is a newest technology which combining telecommunication and information technology for medical purposes Joyce (2011). It gives a new way to deliver health care services when the distance between the doctor and patient is significantly away. Rural area will get the benefit from this application. Patient monitoring is one of the telemedicine, which always needs improvement to make it better. It is vital to care in operating and emergency rooms, intensive care and critical care units. It is also important for respiratory therapy, recovery rooms, out-patient care, radiology, ambulatory, home and sleep screening applications
The advantages of a patient monitoring system are it can reduce the risk of infection and other complication in order to make the patients comfortable. Furthermore, implement of patient monitoring in hospitals might reduce the costs in terms of installation and also maintenance of wiring
Statement of the Problem
It is well known that developing countries like Nigeria are facing a lot of shortage of medical expertise in medical science. Due to this, they are unable to provide good medical services to the teaming population. Patients also have to stay in long queues for medical attention.
Improper or wrong diagnosis has been known to be the bane of our hospitals. This has led to the, death of large number of people.
Health care facility should be accessible by all at all times. But some of the people that should access these facilities are far removed from these facilities. More so, in the few available facilities, qualified medical personnel are always key issues that need urgent redress. In view of the foregoing, it would be of great necessity to provide a computerized system that will provide a complementary medical service, such as medical disease diagnosis in places where accessibility is a problem as well as health care facilities where qualified experts are lacking.
Objectives of the Study
The goal of this thesis is design low-cost device which measures Chest Disease Diagnostic and Monitoring system by clipping sensors on one of the fingers and then displaying the result on a android application interface. Miniaturized heart rates monitor system based on a microcontroller. It offers the advantage of portability over tape-based recording systems. The thesis explains how a single-chip microcontroller can be used to analyze heart beat rate signals in real time. the Hardware and software design are oriented towards a single-chip microcontroller-based system, hence minimizing the size.
Motivation
Cardiovascular disease is one of the main causes of death in the many countries, it accounted for over 15 million deaths worldwide. In addition, several million people are disabled by cardiovascular disease. The delay between the first symptom of any cardiac ailment and the call for medical assistance has a large variation among different patients and can have fatal consequences.
One critical inference drawn from epidemiological data is that deployment of resources for early detection and treatment of heart disease has a higher potential of reducing fatality associated with cardiac disease than improved care after hospitalization.
Hence new strategies are needed in order to reduce time before treatment. Monitoring of patients is one possible solution.
This project can be used in hospitals (Calling Ambulance.) and also for patients who can be under continues monitoring while traveling from place to place (using heart rate band).
Since the system is continuously monitoring the patient and in case of any abnormal in the heart beat rate of the patient the system will immediately send message to the concerned doctors and relatives about the condition of the patient and abnormal details.
