Enhancing Pulse Measurement with IoT Technologies for TCM

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the diagnosis relies on a comprehensive analysis of clinical syndromes by using four methods: inspection; auscultation and olfaction; interrogation; and palpation. Pulse examination is one of two practices used in palpation. To perform diagnosis, TCM doctors put three fingers on top of the patient's wrist, usually the index, the middle, and the ring finger, feel the reflection of the pulse, combined with the position and different pressing level, to determine the type of pulse. Each finger position corresponds to the condition of each different organ. With each press level and reflection received from the pulse, doctors gain the condition of their patient's internal abnormalities, combined with multiple factors, such as diet, external observable abnormalities, etc. to finalize their diagnosis. In this research, we argue that it is possible to shorten a gap between TCM and technologies to streamline such methods with modern IoT technologies. In this paper, we continue our previous work on this topic to demonstrate a possibility to visualize pulse measurement in real time with IoT technologies. The enhanced design used a customized circuit layout, a piezoelectric pressure sensor, Raspberry Pi 4, server application and a desktop application. Our findings, conclusions and future work are also presented at the end of this paper.