A Portable IoT-cloud ECG Monitoring System for Healthcare

Abstract

Public healthcare has recently become an issue of great importance due to the exponential growth in the human population, the increase in medical expenses, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Speed is one of the crucial factors in saving life, particularly in case of heart attack. Therefore, a healthcare device is needed to continuously monitor and follow up heart health conditions remotely without the need for the patient to attend a medical center. Therefore, this paper proposes a portable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring system to improve healthcare for heart attack patients in both home and ambulance settings. The proposed system receives the ECG signals of the patient and sends the ECG values to a MySQL database on the IoT-cloud via Wi-Fi. The signals are displayed as an ECG data chart on a webpage that can be accessed by the patient's doctor based on the HTTP protocol that is employed in the IoT-cloud. The proposed system detects the ECG data of the patient to calculate the total number of heartbeats, number of normal heartbeats, and the number of abnormal heartbeats, which can help the doctor to evaluate the health status of the patient and decide on a suitable medical intervention. This system therefore has the potential to save time and life, but also cost. This paper highlights the five main advantages of the proposed ECG monitoring system and makes some recommendations to develop the system further.