Development of a Medical Care Terminal for Efficient Monitoring of Bedridden Subjects

Abstract

This work is developed in the context of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) and has as main objective the development of a mechatronic system that allows the care of bedridden patients with ongoing medical care handled by a single person. The developed Medical Care Terminal (MCT) improves autonomy in home care, safety, comfort, and hygiene of bedridden patients. The MCT has six biomedical sensors and four environmental sensors. Data acquisition and processing is performed using Arduino and LabVIEW platforms, respectively. The proposed solution has, as main feature, its adaptability to the patient needs. One of the MCT functionalities is the remote access to the patient data through the web. The caregiver may request help from a specialist who sends back information in real time to perform first aid assistance. This device has a flexible configuration allowing a fast and cheap reconfiguration according the specific needs of the patient. The proposed mechatronic system intends to meet the needs of bedridden patients improving their quality of life, health, safety, and comfort, while enabling the remote monitoring of the patients.

Bath-Ambience—A Mechatronic System for Assisting the Caregivers of Bedridden People

“…Environment variables can also be monitored by the system [ 14 ]. The environment for giving an automated bath was developed to meet the different demands of patients; therefore, it provides an environment that supports the patient in standing in a vertical position, which makes it possible to run a pre-programmed course of a sequence of tasks: lathering, rinsing and drying, in order to minimize the effort of caregivers [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ].…”

“…Therefore, the need to have a healthy ageing society requires major help from technology [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Considering technologies developed to assist the activities to care for bedridden people, there have been several developments in the bathing area, such as improving the the environment for giving the bath, smart bathrooms [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ], bed technology [ 14 , 15 ], washing systems [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ], including the use of body sensors and control systems [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 ]. Usually, in a domestic environment, there is only one caregiver taking care of the bedridden person.…”

Mathematical and Computational Modelling in Matlab for the Study of an Orc Solar System

“…Some formalisms and tools can be used for developing safe software for critical systems [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

Microfluidic Devices and Microfluidics-Integrated Electrochemical and Optical (Bio)Sensors for Pollution Analysis: A Review

“…The current trend in sensor technologies is to develop labs-on-chips that allow, for example, the diagnosis of diseases in a very short time, or testing/monitoring (medical diagnostics [19], food, environmental monitoring, etc. [20,21]) in the field (i.e., point-ofneed/care) [20,22] outside of central laboratories with devices that are affordable and easy to use by anyone, anywhere, and at any time.…”