International Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics (IJETCSE)

ISSN: 0976-1353 Volume 24 Issue 4 – MARCH 2017.

Patient Monitoring System Using LabVIEW

Mohanraj T#1 and Keshore Raj S N*2

#
B.E., EEE, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College (Autonomous), Sivakasi, Tamilnadu, India
*
B.E., EEE, Mepco Schlenk Engineering College (Autonomous), Sivakasi, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract— The medical treatment and diagnosis of patients in The clinical output of the biosignals are then published to
India, especially in rural regions are adversely affected due to the web, which can be accessed by the doctor from anywhere.
lack of proper healthcare and a poor patient to doctor ratio. This The doctor can also offer his suggestions and prescriptions if
project aims at developing a suitable monitoring system,
required. In other words, this monitoring system measures
through which the doctor can monitor patients without
physically being present near the patient. This monitoring physiological parameters like ECG, PCG, Temperature and
system assists the doctor in carrying out medical tests and also Heart rate, pre-processes them and displays them in a
provides patient-doctor interaction, when the doctor cannot be graphical user interface which is published on a personalized
physically present near the patient. The proposed system uses a website that can be viewed by the doctor from anywhere.
variety of sensors to monitor human body parameters like
Temperature, Heartbeat rate, ECG and GSR. These sensors are II. EXISTING TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
integrated together and their output is made available to the
doctor in graphical form. The Doctor can access this from Most widely used Patient Monitoring Systems comprise
anywhere and can use it to monitor the patient’s condition. This primarily of Wired Devices. Using wired devices restricts the
system not only allows the doctor to examine the patient’s patient to a room, wired to a bed and also requires a doctor’s
condition but also allows the doctor to share his suggestions and presence for monitoring. The proposed system eliminates that
prescriptions. The sensors are integrated to LabVIEW through limitation and helps the doctor in monitoring the patients
Arduino to provide a GUI based environment and monitoring
parameters are displayed on the LabVIEW front panel. This from anywhere.
LabVIEW front panel is published over the web server with Though many wireless Monitoring Systems have been
both access and control permissions with a unique IP address. proposed, they suffer from various disadvantages, depending
The doctor can make use of this IP address to access the upon the technology used for wireless communication.
monitoring system. This system is also capable of providing Bluetooth, ZigBee, Wi-Fi and Dash7 are some of the Wireless
visual image/video to the doctor. technologies that are being widely preferred for wireless
communication. However, each technology has its own
Index Terms— GSR – Galvanic Skin Response, BMI – Body
Mass Index, BMR – Basal Metabolic Rate. limitation, which makes the system inefficient. Bluetooth has
the lowest Signal Range of 10m and has a relatively slower
data transfer rate. ZigBee has a relatively higher Signal Range
I. INTRODUCTION of 10 – 20m but higher setup cost and weaker security makes
In a developing country like India, lack of proper medical it unsuitable for this application.
facilities has been a major concern, especially in remote In the proposed system, an inbuilt feature of LabVIEW
villages. Lack of proper medical treatment & diagnosis in known as the Web Publishing Tool is used, which overcomes
rural areas, is mainly due to the poor doctor to patient ratio. the above mentioned limitations.
In order to increase the patient care efficacy, there arises a
need to improve the patient monitoring system in a more
effective way. The main drawback in the current patient III. PROPOSED SYSTEM
monitoring system is the requirement of the physical presence The Block Diagram of the proposed system is shown in
of the doctor in the vicinity of the patient, which is not fig 1. The physiological parameters of the patient are
possible at all times. Hence it becomes necessary to develop measured using different sensors and their output is processed
a system which does not demand the doctor’s presence for through a microcontroller. The Microcontroller performs the
patient monitoring. Owing to the advancements in function of a DAQ and simply serves the signals to
bioinstrumentation and telecommunications technologies, it LabVIEW. The Signal is processed through the LabVIEW
has become feasible to design a monitoring system to acquire, VIs.
record, display and transmit the physiological signals from The output is displayed in the front panel of LabVIEW
the human body to any location. The proposed patient which is then published to the web server. The doctor can
monitoring system enables doctors to monitor vital biosignals view the output from anywhere through the specific IP
such as ECG, Respiration, Heart rate and body temperature address.
of patients especially in ICU and CCU.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics (IJETCSE) ISSN:
0976-1353 Volume 24 Issue 4 – MARCH 2017.

3) Temperature Sensor
MAX30205 Temperature Sensor is used for the body
temperature measurement of the patient. The MAX30205
Sensor communicates through I²C via 2 – wire interface. The
sensor has a 2.7V to 3.3V supply voltage range. It has an
operating temperature range of 0°C to +50°C.

Fig 4: MAX30205 Temperature Sensor

Fig 1: Block Diagram of the project A person's ordinary body temperature can typically vary
from 36.5 °C to 37.5 °C. Variation in body temperature can
be due to various reasons like fever, immediate impact of
A. Hardware Required anxiety, drying out etc.
1) Arduino UNO
The Arduino Uno is a commonly used microcontroller 4) ECG Sensor
board based on the ATmega328 IC. It has 14 digital AD8232 ECG Sensor Module [3] is used to measure the
input/output pins - 6 analog inputs, a 16 MHz crystal electrical activity of the heart. The AD8232 is an integrated
oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, signal conditioning block for ECG and other bio potential
and a reset button, out of which 6 pins can be used as PWM measurement applications. It measures the Electro
outputs. Cardiogram readings of the patient through three electrodes
attached to the patient’s body [2].

Fig 2: Arduino UNO microcontroller

Arduino is just used as a DAQ (Data Acquisition) to

communicate the input signals to the LabVIEW. The Signals
are manipulated using the LabVIEW VIs and not the
controller.
Fig 5: AD8232 ECG Sensor with electrode and connector cable
2) Heart Rate Monitor
Pulse Sensor [4] is an open-source heart rate monitoring 5) GSR Sensor
sensor built to work with the Arduino. It uses periodic Galvanic Skin response [5] is a method of measuring the
sampling of ADC value from the light intensity sensor, and electrical conductance of the skin. Strong emotion can cause
signal filtering to detect the peak-to-peak length in the data. stimulus to the sympathetic nervous system which results in
The heart rate is measured from the finger tip of the patient. more sweat being secreted by the sweat glands. GSR can be
It can also be measured from the softer part of the ear lobes. used to spot such strong emotions with the help of two
electrodes attached to two fingers on one hand.

Fig 6: Galvanic Skin Response Sensor with finger cuff

Fig 3: Heart Beat Rate
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International Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics (IJETCSE) ISSN: 0976-
1353 Volume 24 Issue 4 – MARCH 2017.

B. Software Platform Implementation

1) LabVIEW The Temperature Sensor – MAX30205 uses I²C
LabVIEW - Laboratory Virtual Instrument Engineering communication and the SDA (Serial Data) and SCL (Serial
Workbench, is an interactive programming environment in Clock) pins are connected to the I2 C pins in the Arduino UNO
which programs can be created using a graphical notation. – A4 (SDA) and A5 (SCL). The Slave Address for the I 2C VI
The programming language used in LabVIEW is is x48.
a dataflow programming language in which the execution is The GSR [5] Sensor’s output pin is connected to one of the
determined by the structure of a graphical block diagram. The analog pins of Arduino. The electrodes are attached to the two
programmer can connect different function-nodes by drawing finger cuffs, which are worn by the patient in any of the two
wires. These wires propagate data as variables and a node can fingers.
execute when all its input data is available. This graphical is The output pin of the Heart Rate Sensor [4] – SEN-11574
highly advantageous as it allows the nonprogrammers to is also connected to the analog pin of Arduino. Finger should
build programs by dragging and dropping virtual be placed in the sensing part of the sensor.
representations of lab equipment in LabVIEW. The LO+ and LO- pins of the ECG Sensor – AD8232 [3]
One of the additional features of LabVIEW is that, it are connected to the digital pins of Arduino and the Output
includes extensive support for interfacing various devices, pin is connected to the analog pin of Arduino. The Surface
instruments and even cameras.
electrodes are connected to the AD8232 module through
LabVIEW also includes built-in support for NI hardware
connector cable and the electrodes should be placed in the
platforms such as CompactDAQ and CompactRIO, with a
patient’s body [2] as shown in fig 8.
large number of device-specific blocks for such hardwares
like the Measurement and Automation eXplorer (MAX)
and Virtual Instrument Software Architecture (VISA)
toolsets.

2) Web Publishing
LabVIEW has a built-in feature called the Web Publishing
Tool, which can be used to publish the front panel of a VI to
the web server. The Web Publishing Tool generates a unique
IP address through which the VI can be remotely accessed.
To access the Remote VI, for a computer connected to a
common LAN Network, the IP address should be in the
format - http://PcName: Port/ViName.html. Similarly, for a
computer to access the remote VI through the Internet, the IP
address should be in the format -
http://lpAddr:Port/ViName.html. It is also mandatory for the Fig 8: ECG Electrode placing position
system to have a LabVIEW Runtime Engine installed and the
The Arduino plays a role of a DAQ and serves the output
browser should have the Microsoft Silverlight Plugin
installed. to the LabVIEW. The output of the sensors is processed
through the LabVIEW Vis and displayed in the front panel.
Separate VIs are used for processing each sensor values.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROPOSED SYSTEM
The sensors are connected to the controller via suitable
pins. Arduino is interfaced with LabVIEW through the LINX
Toolkit. LINX provides an easier way to use the LabVIEW
VIs for interfacing common embedded platforms like
Arduino, chipKIT and MyRIO with LabVIEW. Using the
peripheral Vis in LINX, the digital I/O, analog I/O, SPI, I2C,
UART and PWM of the platforms can be accessed.

Fig 9: Hardware kit along with the output in LabVIEW

In the front panel, the personal details of the patient such

as the patient’s Name, Date of Birth, Gender, Contact
Information, and Medical parameters like Blood Group,
Height, Weight, Blood Pressure and Blood Sugar should be
entered as input.

Fig 7: Photograph of the hardware kit

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International Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics (IJETCSE) ISSN:
0976-1353 Volume 24 Issue 4 – MARCH 2017.

The Activity Factor which categorizes patients based on

their daily exercise should be chosen from the dropdown list.
From the age, height and weight of the patient, medical
details like BMI, BMR, Carbohydrates, Calories, Protein and
Fat are calculated mathematically.
A Separate text box is provided for entering the
Queries/Problems of the Patient and another text box for the
doctor to enter the prescriptions.

Fig 11: Front panel embedded in web browser

With the LabVIEW Runtime Engine and the Microsoft

Silverlight Extension installed, a computer connected to the
internet can access the Remote Front Panel from anywhere.
The Remote front panel can request control of the VI to the
server and the control will be transferred to the remote panel.
As long as the remote panel has control of the VI, the server
Fig 10: LabVIEW Front panel cannot access the VI. The front panel will be accessible only
when the Remote panel releases control of the VI.
An option for accessing the webcam is provided in the
front panel which gives visual image/video to the doctor. The
NI VISA drivers for Webcam is used to access the built-in V. FUTURE SCOPE
webcam of the Laptop. External Webcam can also be added Along with the monitoring parameters included in the
if needed. The Doctor can access the webcam in case he needs system, all the available monitoring systems can also be
a physical examination of the patient. integrated.
An Additional option named REPORT is also provided, By integrating this system with DBMS (Data Base
through which the entire prescription (with the Patient’s Management System), a database can be maintained with all
History) can be generated as a .txt file. The Report is also the patient details and medical history.
displayed in the front panel along with the Hospital details. By manipulating the output parameters, an alarm system
Fig 10 shows the LabVIEW’s front panel of the proposed can be implemented, which will alert the doctor in case of
system, containing all the above mentioned parameters. The emergencies, through SMS or Mail.
entire front panel is then published in the web server through In case of emergencies such as Cardiac Arrest, certain
the Web Publishing Tool in LabVIEW. The Web Publishing instruments like the Defibrillator can be triggered.
Tool automatically generates a unique IP address, through the
Remote Front panel can be accessed.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology in Computer Science & Electronics
(IJETCSE) ISSN: 0976-1353 Volume 24 Issue 4 – MARCH 2017.

VI. CONCLUSION
The Proposed system, when employed in day to day life,
will be a revolution in the Medical field and will have a
great impact in rural areas where the doctor to patient ratio
is very low. The proposed system will also have a low cost
of implementation and hence can be employed
everywhere.

REFERENCES
[1] NP Joshi, PV Patel, and P. M. Grant, “LabVIEW and Web-Server
based Human Body Monitoring System,” IJAREEIE, Vol. 3, Issue 5,
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[2] Joyanta Kumar Roy, Bansari Deb, Dip Chakraborty Satyajit Mahanta
and Nairit Banik, “The Wearable Electronic Rescue System for Home
Alone Elderly- Labview & Arduino Evaluation,” IOSR-JECE, Volume
8, Issue 6 (Nov. - Dec. 2013), PP 50-55.
[3] N Natarajan, S Aparna and J Sam Jeba Kumar, “Patient Monitoring
System Based on e-health Sensors and Web Services,” ECAI 2016 -
International Conference – 8th Edition, July 2016.
[4] Salomi S. Thomas, “Sensing Heart beat and Body Temperature
Digitally using Arduino,” SS – AAICSP – 10 - 01.
[5] K. Subramanya, Vishnuprasada V. Bhat, and Sandeep Kamath, “A
wearable device for monitoring galvanic skin response to accurately
predict changes in blood pressure indexes and cardiovascular
dynamics,” IEEE, Annual IEEE India Conference (INDICON).

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