HealthBand: a Remotely Monitored Health Status Bracelet

HealthBand is an innovative solution for detecting and locating a person whose health in in grave danger. It's mostly designed as a remote rescue system for people who are at risk of having stroke, cardiac arrest and heart attack. HealthBand is a smartphone synced mobile health monitoring bracelet capable of reading a human's vital signs (pulse rate and body-temperature).

I've designed this project for my grandma, so that we could monitor her when no one's home to be with her. If the bracelet detects life threatening vital readings, the phone synced to the bracelet will automatically call my mom or my dad to prompt if my grandparents are ok. If grandma doesn't answer the phone, we would know that something could possibly have happened.

THE BIGGER PICTURE:

The project isn't only limited for tracking fellow individuals. The project can still be developed to meet medical standards. Once it does, hospitals can use the HealthBand project to monitor their outpatients. Patients who are at risk of unpredictable health conditions such us having Seizures, Stroke, Cardiac Arrest and Heart Attack. If an incident does occur, the bracelet can predict it before it even occurs,the HealthBand system would be able to notify the nearest hospital by sending the exact GPS coordinates of the person in need.

My Full Research and Build Log: https://www.googlesciencefair.com/projects/en/201...

This is a show and tell, less of a tutorial.

Step 1: Google Science Fair 2015

This is my entry for the Google Science Fair 2015. Your support would really mean a lot to me!

3 Ways How You Can Help:

Please watch the YouTube Video, if you like it please share it or just press the thumbs up.
You can visit my official entry here GSF 2015 (HealthBand). Please press the g+1
Your feedback really means a lot to me! It helps me in developing future prototypes. Please be constructive, as much as possible. I'm open to any sort of reaction, comment and suggestion.

Step 2: CLARIFICATION

To avoid misunderstandings here are the things I needed to clarify.

The project was only intended to be submitted to the Google Science Fair 2015. At first we had no plans of sharing the project in public thus the project had lacked documentation. We only took pictures of the significant steps for the panel of judges to view.

If ever we are lucky enough and deserving to win the Google Science Fair, we would spend some of the prize money to patent the project. So far, it's original and no one has ever claimed to patent it.

If ever we get to patent it, only then will we distribute the codes, the schematic, the blueprints and the skeatches here at instructables. For now, this tutorial will only be discussing the main concept of the project, and how each component works. So for those who have good experiences with electronics and computer programming, you could make your own HealthBand without the schems.

Step 3: The Problem

Personal:

My grandma is in maintenance, her blood pressure is usually high, or higher then normal. There are times when my grandma gets left alone in their home. My grandpa still goes to work as well as my uncles. During summers, I insist to stop by their house to take good care of my grandma while my dad goes to work. Although, there are times that gets us worried when no one is there for her.

Global:

There are certain health conditions that are completely unpredictable. People who are at risk of collapsing, cardiac arrest, heart attack and stroke are most likely to be found dead when it's too late. According to CDC, heart-failure ranks first in their list of the top leading causes of death while stroke ranks fourth.

Step 4: My Research

THE LEADING CAUSES OF DEATH

According to a statistical research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The leading cause of death was heart diseases while stoke ranked 5th. Some of the causes of death had the same thing in common, they were quite unpredictable.

(Here's pie chart that I have graphed.)

VITAL SIGNS

Vital signs are measurements of the body's most basic functions. The four main vital signs routinely monitored by medical professionals and health care providers include the following:

1.) BODY TEMPERATURE

Normal human body temperature, also known as normothermia or euthermia, depends upon the place in the body at which the measurement is made, the time of day, as well as the activity level of the person. Nevertheless, commonly mentioned typical values are:Normal human body temperature, also known as normothermia or euthermia, depends upon the place in the body at which the measurement is made, the time of day, as well as the activity level of the person. Nevertheless, commonly mentioned typical values are:Oral (under the tongue): 36.8° ± 0.4 °C (98.2° ± 0.7 °F) Internal (rectal): 37.0 °C (98.6 °F)
Building a DIY temperature sensor: Temperature Sensor Tutorial

2.) PULSE RATE

Heart rate, or heart pulse, is the speed of the heartbeat measured by the number of poundings of the heart per unit of time — typically beats per minute (bpm). The heart rate can vary according to the body's physical needs, including the need to absorb oxygen and excrete carbon dioxide. Activities that can provoke change include physical exercise,sleep, anxiety, stress, illness, ingesting, and drugs.
The normal resting adult human heart rate ranges from 60–100 bpm. Bradycardia is a slow heart rate, defined as below 60 bpm. Tachycardia is a fast heart rate, defined as above 100 bpm at rest. When the heart is not beating in a regular pattern, this is referred to as an arrhythmia. These abnormalities of heart rate sometimes indicate disease.
A DIY pulse monitor design from make magazine: Infrared Pulse Sensor
My written article on making a DIY arduino pulse monitor: Homebrew Arduino Pulse Monitor

3.) RESPIRATION RATE

I have no plans for making a sensor for this. (out of scope)

4.) BLOOD PRESSURE

Blood pressure" usually refers to the arterial pressure of the systemic circulation, usually measured at a person's upper arm. A person’s blood pressure is usually expressed in terms of the systolic (maximum) pressure over diastolic (minimum) pressure and is measured in millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). Normal resting blood pressure for an adult is approximately 120/80 mm Hg.
Make Magazine's DIY Sphygmomanometer: DIY Blood Pressure Monitor

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DIY ATMEGA ARDUINO

The diagrams below illustrates an ATmega chip acting as a standalone Arduino.

Atmel Datasheet: ATmega328
The DIP package ATmega 328 serves as an ideal MCU for building a rough steampunk style prototype.

BLUETOOTH MODULE

HC-05 Bluetooth Datasheet: HC-05 Embedded Bluetooth Serial Communication Module The Bluetooth module that I have chosen to use is the famous HC-05, a module that communicates by sending serial values.

Step 5: Gathering the Parts Needed

Step 6: Creating a Comfortable Bracelet

The first step in making the project was making a comfortable bracelet to wear. I've used a scrap piece of canvas for this.

Step 7: Finding a Sufficient and Reliable Power Source

I chose to use a 3.7v (1,000mAh) Lithium battery which I salvaged from a working phone battery. It should last a day or two, powering an ATmega MCU and some peripherals. The voltage was quite low and some of the components needed a minimum of 5v so I added a boost-up regulator with a built in lithium charger. I got one from a powerbank.

Step 8: Building a Freestyle MCU

I was supposed to use a Flexible PCB design but there are no services that offered to fabricate those in our country so I decided to build a freestyle (steampunk) standalone Arduino using Atemel's ATmega328 MCU chip. (datasheet found at research page)

Step 9: Buning the Bootloader and Uploading the Program

I had temporarily added some wires to burn the Arduino bootloader and program to the standalone Arduino. Here's a tutorial made by a fellow Instructable member: Standalone Arduino / ATMega chip on breadboard

Step 10: Making Some DIY Sensors

The project is nothing without the sensors. I've managed to make all of them from scratch.

PULSE RATE SENSOR

The pulse rate sensor was made using a photo diode and a RED ultrabright SMD LED. The amount of light reflected to the photodiode varies due to the pressure of blood flowing through the artery (when the heart pumps). The values are read using analogRead() since the sensor is connected to the Arduino's analog pin.

TEMPERATURE SENSOR

I've managed to salvage a temperature sensor from an armpit thermometer. The readings of the temperature sensor form the wrist was somewhat different to the ones taken at the armpit, this is due to the variation of heat points of the human body. With little calibration we were able to find the equivalent values for the wrist temperature. (*Later on we've came to a conclusion that using the temperature sensor was for reference use only and not for alarming medical units due to the fact that it was not medically accurate.)

VOLTAGE DIVIDER

One of our fears were if the HealthBand was to run out of batteries, it could give out false readings and we could confuse that as an indication of the patient's death. We added a voltage divider to track the current battery status, so that we could tell whether the 0 (zeros) from the app monitor is an indication of an emergency or if the 0 (zeros) were only displayed due to the low bat status.

Step 11: Adding the Bluetooth Module

In this step I integrated a Bluetooth module capable of connecting to a smart device. For this project I've chosen to use the famous HC-05 serial com Bluetooth module.

Datasheet: HC-05

Step 12: Testing a Slave to Master Bluetooth Communication

Before we move on to the app designing process, we just had to go through the pre-testing stage. The pre-testing process was done by using two Arduinos, the HealthBand and a separate Arduino Board. I used another Bluetooh Module as the slave for the HealthBand's Bluetooth (Master). The softwares I used were the Arduino IDE and the Processing™

Step 13: A Related Project

The previous step was based on a project I conducted a year ago.

My: Homebrew Arduino Pulse Monitor

Some of the codes were given, but as said before we won't be giving the full version yet for some reasons.

Step 14: Designing the Android App

Thomas, the guy whom I had a collaboration with is currently making a video tutorial and demo on this. I'm the hardware guy, you''ll just have to wait for his words. :)

Step 15: Results

To test the effectiveness and reliability of the project, I compared the readings to medically certified instruments. With the help of my dad, I was able to get access to some of the hospital's medical instruments such as the EKG and the Body Temperature Monitor.

The "summary" (refer to the photo) in the app is designed to display "low pulse rate, warning!", "high pulse rate, warning!", "low body temperature, warning!" "high body temperature, warning!" or combinations of the different warnings. We weren't able to test the "summary" since we haven't had troubles with the test subject. Removing the HealthBand wouldn't simulate death (no pulse), since we added a fail safe switch to prevent the HealthBand from giving misreadings.

Step 16: Conclusion/ Report

In conclusion, I succeeded in building a working prototype of the HealthBand while my friend was able to create a working Android app. The HealthBand was able to sync successfully to the mobile app.

The project had some errors and misreadings. One was the body temperature. The project read it as 36.2° Celsius (wrist temp) while the medical grade thermometer read it as 36.8° Celsius (armpit temp). There was a small small discrepancy. In the end, we were able to fix it by recalibrating. I found out that the temperature reading capability of the project I not medically accurate thus it could only be used for reference. The pulse monitor on the other hand was fairly accurate and was able to acquire almost the same reading in comparison to the EKG from the hospital where my dad works. In the end we were able to refine the project. We added fail-safes to prevent the project from making false readings.The project was a success and met out goal. My aim is to build a better prototype next year, equipped with sphygmomanometer for reading the blood pressure. The project has a long way to go. It must go through lots of regulations, research, testing and redesign. Though aimed to be ambitious, the concept is present and was proven to be possible by a working prototype of both hardware and software. Hospitals can build much sophisticated systems and much organized systems for monitoring outpatients. Thank you for your time!

Step 17: Bibliography, References & Acknowledgements

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/healthlibrary/condi...

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to my dad, my gradpa and my grandma for serving as my inspiration for this project. I would also like to thank my friend, sheena, for making me remember of making this my entry for the GSF 2015. Finally, this project would be nothing without the help of my good youthful friend Thomas Reyes, the programmer and designer of the android app who refused to join as my partner at GSF.