The design of a low-cost pulse sensor for remote healthcare
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Abstract
Ghana has a low doctor to patient ratio, and to help ease pressure from the health care sector, interest in remote healthcare is growing. This paper explores design options for low-cost pulse monitors for use by patients who require access to healthcare but do not have the means to visit regularly for consultation. The product measures their heart rate and sends the data to a remote database using a mobile app implemented with flutter as a gateway. Patients can view their health trends in the app, and health professionals can monitor their patients using the app. The circuit for this pulse sensor was designed in Eagle and implemented on a breadboard to show that the non-invasive technique of acquiring heart rate using infrared light-emitting diodes (LEDs) could be used favorably on persons with darker skin tones. The research project designed an algorithm for the task and compared this with an existing algorithm using PPG and ECG datasets from medical databases as well as PPG signals generated from the pulse sensor. Heart rates detected ranged from 30-300 beats/minute. 5 datasets from the device were statistically compared to PPG signals from a medical database to ascertain their reliability.