Abstract

The emergence of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly increased the global demand for healthcare services in Nigeria. A large numbers of elderly and vulnerable people are battling with prolonged chronic health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, acute malaria, and heart-attack. However, access to reliable, dependable and effective medical and healthcare services in remote areas are practically impeded by the absence of medical specialists and health caregivers coupled with insufficient health facilities and equipment which are not only expensive but also not available. Hence, heartbeat rate and body temperature have been identified as the major vitals’ physiological parameter to monitor the patient’s health status. Thus, this paper aims to design and implement an affordable and smart healthcare system that allows continuous assessment of patient pulse rate and body temperature via sensors and transmits the data over a wireless network through Wi-Fi module that facilitates data analytics and visualization by healthcare staff. The model consists of four-tier architecture features, Tier-1 is the data sensing module (input unit), Tier-2 is the data processing module, Tier-3 data communication module and Tier-4 is the output unit. Furthermore, the patient’s temperature and heartbeat rate data are monitored and stored in the cloud using the internet of things (IoT) application. Also, the experimental results indicate an average error rate of 2.86% and 0.44% for heartbeat and body temperature respectively as compared to the conventional medical devices. An indication that the error rate is within the acceptable limit (<5%). Based on the questionnaires assessed by fifty (50) respondents, a high percentage of acceptance is noticeable in the age group of 35-40, 50-55 and 60-65. The further result shows that the average body temperature lies within 36.2±1.14%.