Remote Patient Monitoring System

Peru is a developing country with more than 40% of its population residing in rural areas with insufficient health care facilities. The recent advancements in telecommunications provide a significant opportunity to the developing countries to develop a health infrastructure that addresses the needs of the rural population.

New technology is now focusing on providing critical health care services to the patients at their door steps in real-time by utilizing the services of modern wireless networks and the Internet.

In the developing countries network-based medical system could act as a catalyst for providing basic health services to the patients who live in rural areas, where health care facilities are either non-existent or of extremely poor quality. The patients in these areas have to travel great distances over a highly inefficient transportation system to reach the nearest health care center. Consequently, a large number of patients die in emergency scenarios. This is particularly evident by a very high maternal and infant mortality rates. The gravity of the problem is further aggravated due to the scarcity of skilled health care staff.

We propose a remote patient monitoring system for maternal and infant care in Peru. The remote patient monitoring consists of three core components:
- Sensor network that monitor the vital signs of the patients.
- Patient node for transmission of data to a root node
- The root node for gathering information from patient nodes and maintaining the records.