A Point Of Care Terminal For COPD Home Management

Abstract: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is currently one of the most prevalent lung diseases around the world, which runs an insidious course, measured over years, with an often-undiagnosed initial phase. Present clinical treatment approach for COPD results in repeated clinical visits and extended hospital stays burdening the available healthcare infrastructures, economy, and also impacting patient quality of life. To alleviate this burden, modern healthcare approaches focus on developing patient-centric solutions in which the patients should be able to request and receive quality medical assistance at their convenience, if possible from their respective homes. In this thesis work, a medical perspective on the treatment and managing of COPD is first understood in order to enunciate the functional requirements of a developing home healthcare system as an alternative to clinical treatment of COPD. Thereafter, an investigative study is carried out to explore recent developments in ICT technologies and their role in healthcare. Later, suitable sensing platforms and communication standards are identified in order to develop a working prototype of a Point of Care (POC) terminal as a proof-of-concept. The POC comprising of a breathing training device and a care application running on an android based smart device is used to measure and monitor breathing patterns of the patients and motivate them for better results and continuous improvement. An optimization exercise for low power consumption is performed on the breathing training device to facilitate additional mobility and long-term monitoring for the same. Through the observations and evaluations, scope for improvement in future versions of the device is also identified.