Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jan 9;11(2):199.
doi: 10.3390/healthcare11020199.

Developing a Low-Cost IoT-Based Remote Cardiovascular Patient Monitoring System in Cameroon

Tagne Poupi Theodore Armand  1 , Md Ariful Islam Mozumder  1 , Sikandar Ali  1 , Austin Oguejiofor Amaechi  2 , Hee-Cheol Kim  3
Affiliations

Developing a Low-Cost IoT-Based Remote Cardiovascular Patient Monitoring System in Cameroon

Tagne Poupi Theodore Armand et al. Healthcare (Basel). .

Abstract

(1) Background: Cameroonians are exposed to poor health services, more so citizens with cardiovascular-related diseases. The global high cost of acquiring healthcare-related technologies has prompted the government and individuals to promote the need for local research and the development of the health system. (2) Objectives: The main goal of this study is to design and develop a low-cost cardiovascular patient monitoring system (RPM) with wireless capabilities that could be used in any region of Cameroon, accessible, and very inexpensive, that are able to capture important factors, well reflecting the patient's condition and provide alerting mechanisms. (3) Method: Using the lean UX process from the Gothelf and Seiden framework, the implemented IoT-based application measures the patients' systolic, diastolic, and heart rates using various sensors, that are automated to record directly to the application database for analysis. The validity of the heuristic evaluation was examined in an ethnographic study of paramedics using a prototype of the system in their work environment. (4) Results: We obtained a system that was pre-tested on demo patients and later deployed and tested on seven real human test subjects. The users' task performances partially verified the heuristic evaluation results. (5) Conclusions: The data acquired by the sensors have a high level of accuracy and effectively help specialists to properly monitor their patients at a low cost. The proposed system maintains a user-friendliness as no expertise is required for its effective utilization.

Keywords: IoT-based application; cardiovascular disease; lean UX process; remote patient monitoring.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Remote monitoring system.
Figure 2
Figure 2
System architecture of the cardiovascular RPM system.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Prototype of various components connected with the RPM microcontroller.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(A–D) shows respectively the prototype system flowchart, the screen for collecting the patient data and notifications, the logging page of our application, and collecting the patient data through Bluetooth interface.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(A–D) shows respectively the prototype system flowchart, the screen for collecting the patient data and notifications, the logging page of our application, and collecting the patient data through Bluetooth interface.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Confirmation of the correct data transmission.
Figure 6
Figure 6
(A,B) shows the Heart disease RPM registration page and View of patients list, respectively.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Patient’s records view from the DB.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization May 2022. [(accessed on 11 August 2022)]. Available online: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases...
    1. Dzudie A., Fourie J.M., Scholtz W., Scarlatescu O., Nel G., Kingue S. PASCAR and WHF Cardiovascular Diseases Scorecard Project. [(accessed on 23 July 2022)];Cardiovasc. J. Afr. 2020 31:103–110. doi: 10.5830/CVJA-2020-015. Available online: https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC-1cdb86c459. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ojong N. The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Pathology of the Economic and Political Architecture in Cameroon. Healthcare. 2020;8:176. doi: 10.3390/healthcare8020176. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bang H.N., Balgah R.A. The ramification of Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis: Conceptual analysis of a looming “Complex Disaster Emergency”. Int. J. Humanit. Action. 2022;7:6. doi: 10.1186/s41018-022-00114-1. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Mvondo M.C., Giamberti A., Ngowe M.N., Mbuoh H.A., Milocco I., Tsague Kengni H.N., Cirri S., Frigiola A. Cardiac Surgery Development in Cameroon: Unexpected Challenges from a Socio-Political Crisis. Front. Cardiovasc. Med. 2022;9:778075. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.778075. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources