Implementing a wireless portable healthcare monitoring system for physiological signals

Design and development of a novel healthcare shirt for wireless monitoring of physiological signals was studied in this paper. The vital signals of ECG, blood pressure and body temperature are measured by sensors embedded in the shirt. The clothing structure can facilitate the attachment of the measuring device. The electrical signals are digitized by a single chip MCU (MSP430F169) and are recorded in Flash ROM. The patient' ID information is also written in Flash ROM and is also transmitted in every information data packet. The biomedical information is automatically sent to a personal digital assistant (PDA, HP iPAQ FA675A) by a Bluetooth module and then will be transmitted to the medical centre or the patient's doctor by WLAN. The PDA embedded with Bluetooth, WiFi and WINCE OS is selected as the mobile device platform. An expansion compact flash card is used for the GPRS application of PDA. The application program written in Delphi served as web server page in the medical centre for the patients' database and communication to the PDA. The patient's vital signals and chart will be automatically displayed in the doctor's screen with one kind of Bluetooth, WiFi and GPRS. The proposed system was demonstrated to promote the mobility and flexibility for both the patients and the medical personnel, which further improves the quality of healthcare.