In order to avoid frequent visits of the medical support staff to the isolation wards to check on patients, the Amrita Center for Wireless Networks and Applications (AmritaWNA) developed a solution – Remote Bed Side Monitoring using Smartphones.

When dealing with COVID-19 infected patients, healthcare workers have to be extremely careful. In such situations, the ideal method of monitoring patience is remotely via protected nursing stations. The use of smartphones and server software can aid in this to minimize the exposure of healthcare personnel to contagious patients. Our use-case employs smartphones (or similar IP-based camera solutions) to periodically capture data from bedside monitors. The data arrives at the server real-time and is processed to provide further alerts.

This can reduce the need for healthcare personnel to directly attend to patients. Smartphone and similar IP-based capture devices can capture bedside monitor data and a live stream it and allow medical review from a remote Network Operation & Control Room. Only if there is an alarming change in vitals or other markers, do medical professionals need to directly attend to the patient. Optical Character Recognition algorithms can be run on the captured images to automate the process of alerts.

Smartphones, which have microphones and displays, enable doctors/nurses to communicate with the patient, audio-visually. Other services, such as informational videos, inspirational videos and entertainment videos, audio-video calls with family/friends, etc., may also be provided to patients. This can be used for the healthcare personnel to assess patients’ mental state since it allows interaction with people remotely even while in isolation..