Mobile phone-based health data acquisition system using Bluetooth technology

The paper addresses development of a mobile health (mHealth) system for remote acquisition of patient data using Bluetooth technology. The proposed system aims at improving chronic disease management using low cost mobile phones. This is of great advantage especially when the patient is on the move. This is achieved by using the mobile´s Bluetooth to transfer health data from patients´ medical devices to a temporary storage buffer via an appropriate hardware interface, called Data Acquisition Module (DAM). The DAM is designed and successfully implemented using a microcontroller chip with simple associated software modules and hardware circuitry. The acquired data is then sent to a remote server using the patient´s mobile phone. Health providers can then monitor health status of their patients regularly and help them for better chronic disease management. Performance of the developed data acquisition system is assessed experimentally and seamless data acquisition and monitoring has been demonstrated.