Monitoring Heart Rate and Body Temperature using Wireless Technology (Zigbee)

Wireless technology has increasingly emerged as one of the demanding technologies in
healthcare industry. Monitoring patients’ condition is a crucial task in any hospital to ensure patients
are in good and stable condition. Wireless sensor network is the solution and has been widely
introduced in measuring vital signs of patients such as temperature, heart rate, oxygen saturation,
respiratory rate and others from remote location. Zigbee Network or accurately known as IEEE
802.15.4/Zigbee on the other hand is known to be a low power consumption device with good and
stable data transmission range, higher network flexibility and large number of nodes. This work is
discussing on integrating heart rate and temperature sensors to a wireless transceiver Zigbee (Xbee)
module and is used to measure patients’ conditions from remote location (nurse’s station). Series of
tests have been conducted using these devices to measure patients’ heart rate and body temperature
for different genders and age group at lying down position. This is to ensure that the devices
developed are reliable, stable and producing the same results as conventional devices (thermometer
and heart beat reader). Results obtained are very encouraging; the developed devices are producing
stable readings and are capable of transmitting information at reasonable distance.