International Journal of Applied Engineering Research and Development (IJAERD) ISSN(P): 2250-1584; ISSN(E): 2278-9383 Vol.

4, Issue 1, Jan 2014, 1-6 TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

MICROCONTROLLER BASED REMOTE TRACKING SYSTEM FOR DEMENTIA PATIENTS

R. MAHALAKSHMI1, L. ASHOK KUMAR2 & P. RANI3
1,3 2

Department of Biotechnology, PSG College of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, PSG College of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT
The location based services are the next major area of growth in the generation of info-communication. This area provides various positioning technologies and services in the real time patient tracking systems, telemedicine and also for other personal healthcare applications. This research work focuses on developing a patient tracking system for mild cognitive impaired patients. The proposed architecture of the system integrates GPS-GSM technology for tracking dementia patients. The main emphasis of the work is on miniaturization and making the system cost effective indigenous product.

KEYWORDS: Dementia, Patient Tracking, Remote Monitoring INTRODUCTION

The aging of the population implies that an increased number of people are going to need some form of care or assistance. In the present scenario 20-30% of the age persons suffer from a common mild cognitive impairment disease called dementia [1]. Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia are characterized by the loss of ones memory and cognition. Patients with this condition undergo rapid mood swings and often wander away from their homes without being aware of it, creating difficulty to the care takers in locating the patient. Patients with dementia also forget the telephone numbers of their care givers and normal telephones are very complicated for their regular use. This in turn puts them at risk during emergency situation where they would struggle to communicate. Here we design a locator device, which alerts the caretaker about the location of the patient autonomously. Related Work Initially RFID, infrared sensors, proximity sensors, and bluetooth were incorporated for indoor tracking and these technologies are restricted to small coverage area. The related work for tracking and monitoring purpose are listed below: S. H. Chew, P. A. Chong, E. Gunawan, K. W. Goh, Y. Kim and C. B. Soh, in [2] developed a hybrid mobile-based location technique using GPS and cellular mobile network infrastructure to provide the location tracking capability. This Patient Location Tracking System (PLTS) was based on Cell ID and GPS data to assist caregivers. Another method to detect dementia patient wandering was reported by K. J. Kim, M. M. Hassan, S. Na and E. N. Huh as in [3] by studying the collected sensor data through activity matching algorithm. S. M. M. Faria, T. R. Fernandez, F. S. Perdigoto as in [4] describes a mobile based web server for tracking elderly patients using GPS/GPRS technology. A remote physiological monitoring (RPM) system for elderly patients monitors the physiological parameters through a ZigBee/GSM network and sends SMS alert to the caretakers as in [5]. S. Nefti, U. Manzoor, S. Manzoor in [6]

R. Mahalakshmi, L. Ashok Kumar & P. Rani

reported an alzheimer patient monitoring system using wireless senor network for ambient assisted living and alerting the caretakers during emergencies. Most of the earlier published works employ a 2G/2.5G wireless communication and most of the standard for monitoring the patient work was concentrated using wireless sensor network and nodes. This paper aims in developing a dedicated system for dementia patients that can actively locate the patient by transferring the location parameters through wireless channel. The main objective of this work is to miniaturize the size of the device with less cost to serve in the Indian market.

METHODOLOGY
The proposed system employs GPS-GSM technology to track the location of dementia patient and also to communicate them. The GPS module is used to extract the location by linking itself to the constellation satellite, thereby facilitating this technology for outdoor tracking. Using this technology any device with a GPS receiver can give the accurate location from the latitude and longitude values. The GSM modem is used for global range wireless communication and connects the users through the subscriber identity module with the mobile equipment to any remote area. Types of Tracking The technology contains two types of tracking methods, namely active and passive tracking. In the case of passive tracking, the device simply stores the information of the object like GPS location, speed, change in direction and events. These information are downloaded onto a computer for study purposes when the object gets back to its original destination. In the case of active tracking, the device not only collects the information mentioned above, but it also transmits the information in real time through satellite or cellular networks. The active tracking method is used in the present system. The communication module in the system uses the available service of public network service provider, whose service can also be rendered for other healthcare monitoring system, real time tracking and telemedicine related applications. System Design The proposed system uses a PIC microcontroller with a serial number 16F88 and a GPS-GSM modem. The PIC16F88 microcontroller of SOIC package has an inbuilt 4K x 14 program flash memory, 368 x 8 bytes of data memory, 256 x 8 bytes of EEPROM memory and a power saving sleep mode that lowers the power consumption. The GPS and GSM module used were procured from Quectel and Telit. The dimensions of GPS module- L50 is 28163mm with patch antenna and the GSM modem Quectel M95 is of 19.9x23.6x2.65mm [7]. All the units together are powered by a standalone rechargeable battery of 3.7V@750mAh. Microcontroller This PIC 16F88 microcontroller is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) based CPU that works on nano Watt technology. It has got three crystal modes that can make the microcontroller to work up to 20MHz. It can also withstand commercial and industrial temperature ranges. The PIC microcontroller takes care of the synchronization between the sending of the GPRS data and the receiving of GPS data. The synchronization is provided by the programming of the PIC microcontroller. This microcontroller is programmed using Embedded C programming language to control the GPS-GSM modules.

Microcontroller Based Remote Tracking System for Dementia Patients

Although 4MHz is the operating frequency is considered in this work, it is safer to select a PIC with a higher operating frequency. Network Requirements The communication module in the system requires a SIM card and a GSM network with high speed circuit switching capability; a 2G/EDGE network ensures this facility. The GSM Modem is programmed with the microcontroller using AT commands to provide a feature to be accessed by the 3G internet enabled mobile phone.

ARCHITECTURE OF THE DEVELOPED SYSTEM

This module is meant for outdoor tracking with the integration of GPS-GSM technology is shown in Figure 1. The main focus in the proposed architecture is to design a miniaturized tracking device suitable for dementia patient. The device can be in the form of pendants, wrist watch and mobile phone in ease of patient usage. The overview on the developed architecture describes that the patient with the tracking device are set free and their location at outdoor will reach the caretaker at a customized intervals of time, thereby ensuring reliable system to know the whereabouts of the patient.

Figure 1: Overview of the System When the device is switched on, based upon the caretakers commands, position values of the tracking device are transmitted to the caretakers internet enabled mobile through wireless 3G technology. When the arrived messages are clicked on the locations can be viewed. Working of the Device The GPS unit is connected to the GSM unit through a microcontroller (PIC16F88). The SIM card holder, battery are connected to the module as per the schematic. The following options are available for the users to get response from the device. Option 1: When a call is made to the device, the location of the patient holding the device is sent to the user as a SMS (Short Message Service) alert.

R. Mahalakshmi, L. Ashok Kumar & P. Rani

Figure 2: Flow of Operation Option 2: When a text command, for example GPS05 is sent to the device, a response message containing the location data will be sent to the user for every 5 minutes to the user, and also previous five locations can be retrieved. Hence the interval duration for tracking can be customized by the care taker. Option 3: An SOS provision is inbuilt so that in case of any emergency when the button is pressed by the patient, a call is made to the user. Here the authenticated user number is a base number stored in the memory of the subscriber identity module. Preferably it can be configured for any number of users.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

A hybrid mobile based embedded system was designed and fabricated as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 3: Prototype of the Locator Device The printed circuit board of the developed module was designed using FR4 material of four layers with dimensions 43mm x 51mm x 3mm. The GPS (L50), GSM (M95) along with PIC16F88 was embedded in the four layered PCB. The overall consumption of the unit takes 3.7 V@750 mAh and an external power supply (9V-12V), is used to recharge the battery.

Microcontroller Based Remote Tracking System for Dementia Patients

Figure 4: Tracking Using 3G-Mobile Phone This module was also tested with a 3G enabled mobile phone. The location was viewed by clicking the http location link that arrived as an SMS alert as shown in Figure 4. The response time for downloading of map showing the location took upto 19 seconds in a mobile phone. The mobile phone is portable and the location can be tracked from any area making its use flexible for individual caretaker. The work is still under progress with the user interface in the form of a touch screen display unit containing the picture of two or three caretakers to contact for assisstance during emergencies with full duplex communication. Geofencing for patient tracking will also be incorporated in the design of the device. Further the device can be minitiazurised to tag it onto the patient with minimum intervention.

CONCLUSIONS
This work described the development of a low cost, compact tracking prototype with the integration of GPS-GSM-3G technology. The miniaturized design is the patient friendly feature of the developed mobile device. Free Google maps and the use of HTTP protocol as data sending method reduces the monthly bundle cost for the individual user and also for the hospitals that employ the system. This tracking unit of dementia patients can be provided at an affordable cost.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Department of Science and Technology (DST), New Delhi, India, for its financial support.

REFERENCES
1. Newcomer, R. et al., (2003) Predicting 12-Month Mortality for Persons with Dementia, Journal of Gerontology, 58B, 187198. 2. Chew,S,H. et al., (2006) A Hybrid Mobile-based Patient Location Tracking System for Personal Healthcare Applications, IEEE Conference, IEMBS, 5188 5191. 3. Kim, K. J. et al., (2009) Dementia Wandering Detection and Activity Recognition Algorithm Using Tri-axial Accelerometer Sensors IEEE Conference, ICUT, 1-5.

R. Mahalakshmi, L. Ashok Kumar & P. Rani

4.

Faria, S. M. M. et al, (2008) Mobile web server for elderly people monitoring, IEEE Symposium on consumer electronics, 1-4.

5.

Jian, Y. et al., (2010) Development of an e-Guardian for the Single Elderly or the Chronically-Ill Patients, Communication and mobile computing IEEE Conference, 378 382.

6.

Nefti, S. et al.,(2010) Cognitive Agent based Intelligent Warning System to Monitor Patients Suffering from Dementia using Ambient Assisted Living, IEEE Conference (i-society), 92-97.

7.

QuectelL50/M95GSM user guide http://www.quectel.com/default.aspx