An IoT-alert System for Chronic Asthma Patients

Asthma claims thousands of lives every year, especially during the cold season, mostly because of delayed access to first-aid and lack of immediate and adequate medical care. Asthma-related fatalities are preventable by home remedies, exercises, prescribed treatments, and providing rapid response and care to patients in case of asthma attacks. The latter is paramount to many asthmatics who are not able to predict an asthma attack well in advance. This work proposes and deploys an IoT-alert system that a chronic asthma patient (or any asthma patient) can use to trigger an alert to inform emergency contacts in case of a sudden asthma attack. This research, done in Rwanda, aims to alert emergency contacts early enough for a rapid response in order to reduce the number of asthma-related deaths in the country. The proposed system, in its basic form, uses a keypad unit as an interaction point with the users, which when pressed triggers the alert system to send SMS messages to registered emergency contacts and sounds a buzzer to alert few of the immediate neighbours of the asthma patients living close by. The intention is to provide support and help the chronic asthma patients, particularly those living alone, to receive appropriate medical aid within five minutes of alerting the neighbors and emergency contacts during a sudden asthma attack. The keypad interaction unit, which is the primary component of this IoT-alert system, can be wall-mounted in any room so that patients can easily access it. A small functioning prototype of the proposed system has been successfully tested at Kigali and testing has proven its effectiveness in helping the asthma patients.