Evaluation of “Portable Health Clinic” with BAN standard for 10K subjects in Bangladesh

Management system of chronic diseases in developing countries and post-disaster situation has been required. Body area network (BAN, IEEE 802.15.6) is expected to be useful in medical field. To evaluate BAN standard, we are implementing BAN in our attaché case type sensor set named “Portable Health Clinic” (PHC), and conducting systematic health checkup in rural and urban areas in Bangladesh. (Methods) In the PHC, we packed weight scale, blood pressure meter, blood sugar meter, body thermometer, pulse oxymeter, as electrical devices, and tape measure (for height, waist and hip), urine test tape (for urine sugar, urine protein and urobilinogen) as no-electrical devices. We provided checkup in rural villages and urban companies in Bangladesh by PHC, and transmitted data by cellphone network to the data center in Dhaka. Individual health condition was categorized into 4 grades, green (healthy), yellow (caution), orange (affected), and red (emergent) by international diagnosis standards of diseases. We provided telemedicine for orange and red, and tele-prescription for hypertensive patients. We are making all sensor devices implemented with BAN. (Results) The health checkup was provided to 5498 subjects until the end of 2012 and categorized green 14%, yellow 66%, orange 17%, and red 3%. The result shows its potency as an effective healthcare system in developing countries and in a chronic phase after disaster. We continue to provide the e-health service for 10K-15 K people each year until March 2014.