Innovative IoT Solutions and Wearable Sensing Systems for Monitoring Human Biophysical Parameters: A Review

Abstract

Digital and information technologies are heavily pervading several aspects of human activities, improving our life quality. Health systems are undergoing a real technological revolution, radically changing how medical services are provided, thanks to the wide employment of the Internet of Things (IoT) platforms supporting advanced monitoring services and intelligent inferring systems. This paper reports, at first, a comprehensive overview of innovative sensing systems for monitoring biophysical and psychophysical parameters, all suitable for integration with wearable or portable accessories. Wearable devices represent a headstone on which the IoT-based healthcare platforms are based, providing capillary and real-time monitoring of patient’s conditions. Besides, a survey of modern architectures and supported services by IoT platforms for health monitoring is presented, providing useful insights for developing future healthcare systems. All considered architectures employ wearable devices to gather patient parameters and share them with a cloud platform where they are processed to provide real-time feedback. The reported discussion highlights the structural differences between the discussed frameworks, from the point of view of network configuration, data management strategy, feedback modality, etc.

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“…A 660 nm red LED and an 880 nm infrared LED are commonly used in pulse oximetry because oximetry relies on the change in the absorption of the electromagnetic energy of the hemoglobin molecule when its chemical bonds are altered (i.e., when it comes into contact with the light beam generated by the LED) [52]. SpO 2 can be expressed by the following polynomial relationship: SpO 2 = aR 2 +bR + c with R = AC red /DC red AC ired /DC ired (7) where a, b, and c are calibration coefficients; AC red and AC ired are the amplitude of the AC components of the output signals from the red and IR photodiodes, respectively; DC red and DC ired are the amplitude of the DC components of the output signals from the RED and IR photodiodes. In the literature, the SpO 2 percentage is often calculated for medical devices as [53]:…”

“…AC red /DC red AC ired /DC ired (7) where a, b, and c are calibration coefficients; AC red and AC ired are the amplitude of the AC components of the output signals from the red and IR photodiodes, respectively; DC red and DC ired are the amplitude of the DC components of the output signals from the RED and IR photodiodes. In the literature, the SpO2 percentage is often calculated for medical devices as [53]:…”

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