A Cost-Effective Remote Saline Level Monitoring Device for Local Hospitals

Abstract

Continuous patient monitoring plays an important role in healthcare industry. The purpose of this research was to develop a new device to remotely monitor the saline level of a patient in cost-effective manner. For that, a prototype has been developed using an IR sensor, load cell, LCD display, servo motor embedded gripper mechanism and a GSM/GPRS module. The load cell is used to measure the weight of the saline bag and the IR sensor is used to detect and count the saline drops that fall through the drip chamber. The saline drop count is displayed on LCD at each time and when level of saline in the bottle reaches the critical level, then the servo motor embedded gripper mechanism is automatically turned on to control the blood backflow and at that time, the clinician will receive an SMS alert to his/her mobile phone through the GSM/GPRS module. To validate the developed system, a test was done using the load cell with standard weights and then, counted the saline droplets with the load cell, servo motor, LCD display, GSM/GPRS module and two LEDs as indicators. Furthermore, an experiment was done with the actual saline fluid with desired drop rate and weights at each time were observed. Arduino Uno has been used as the main controller in this saline level monitoring system. The validated results of this prototype showed that, this system can be installed in the local hospitals and care homes.