Wrist-card: PPG sensor based wrist wearable unit for low cost personalized cardio healthcare system

Of late, modern lifestyle has noticeably accentuated several health hazards related to cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). A simple, cost efficient but effective way out of this threatening health issue can be the prevention of these diseases beforehand by ensuring customized routine exercise and regular health checkup. In this context, we propose Wrist-Card, a photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor based wrist wearable unit (WWU) and a personalized healthcare android application, to monitor the cardio-health of the user and guide with customized feedback measured from the health indexes for the effective prevention of CVDs at low cost. ‘Wrist-Card’ consists of three components: a low-cost PPG sensor, Wrist Wearable Unit (WWU) and an Android application. The WWU mainly consists of a microcontroller, Bluetooth module and power-supply, all embedded into a single printed circuit board (PCB). Our proposed system provides a concurrent monitoring of health indexes such as heart rate, heart rate variability, pressure, blood oxygen saturation and blood glucose level with the help of PPG. The proposed system provides an average absolute error (AAE) of 2.63 beats per minute (BPM) with a standard deviation of 1.42 BPM from the measurements taken from standardized measuring unit for 10 test subjects. However, sensor noise as well as some forms of motion artifacts can be attributed to the deviations of the obtained results from the ground truths. Considering the global acceleration of CVDs, our proposed low cost and affordable Wrist-Card would offer a smart and efficient preventive approach against CVDs, therefore working as a humanitarian platform to reduce the mortality rate across the world.