(THE NEWSMAN OF INDIA.COM)
Bengaluru, April 9, 2020: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)-Rishikesh, in collaboration with Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), has developed a state-of-the-art health monitoring system to remotely assess the health of COVID-19 suspects/patients quarantined in homes and hospitals. The solution aims to significantly reduce the risk of exposure to healthcare workers. It is also expected to reduce the increasing demand of PPE and other logistics.

Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to develop a solution to remotely monitor patients for limiting exposure of healthcare workers was prime and urgent. To combat this need, AIIMS Rishikesh and BEL came together to provide a comprehensive digital and clinically appropriate solution. Based on inputs given by AIIMS-Rishikesh, BEL developed the Proof of Concept (PoC) model of a system integrating non-invasive health monitoring sensors to measure critical parameters such as Temperature, Pulse Rate, SPO2 (Saturated Oxygen level) and Respiration Rate. BEL, which has proven expertise in Network Centric and IoT systems, has also networked these sensors for remotely monitoring the critical parameters.

A mobile app / web browser has been developed for people to get enrolled with AIIMS-Rishikesh once they show symptoms of COVID-19. AIIMS-Rishikesh will study patient complaints and based on the assessment by clinical experts, a health monitoring kit will be handed over to the patient for periodical monitoring of the critical parameters.

Patient health parameters, along with patient location, are uploaded on a regular basis on to a centralised Command & Control Centre (CCC) on Cloud using either the patient’s mobile phone or integral GSM SIM. The use of Cloud will facilitate seamless scaling of the database of COVID-19 suspects/patients.

Software will give out alerts in the form of messages to medical officers and health care workers when the health parameters exceed the threshold. It will also record the severity of the patient’s condition in different colour codes.

Data analytics software of the CCC will also graphically map the geo-distribution of COVID-19 suspects/patients in the state. This would help the hospital administration in visualising the hot spots and taking necessary action to isolate and cordon off these areas to check the spread the virus.