Integrated Low Cost, LoRa-Based, Real Time Fluid Infusion Flask Monitoring System

Manual intravenous (IV) monitoring delays, put patients at risk, as the reaction time of nursing staff can be critical to the patient’s health. The widespread use of LoRa networks today is a reality. The deployment of devices and applications based on LoRa networks in healthcare environments, such as hospital facilities, is of great interest and can offer both time savings for medical and nursing staff and improvements in medical care. In this work an integrated low-cost, real-time monitoring system for fluid infusion based on a LoRa network is presented. The measured (monitoring) data are the weight of the fluid infusion flask and the number of fluid drops. The design of the system and the affordability of the materials (low-cost devices) give the possibility for immediate application in healthcare environments. As the system consists of low-cost sensors, and given that it is intended for health purposes, extensive research has been carried out on the evaluation and reliability of the measurements. The proposed system is intended for medical care; in this sense it should have the lowest possible measurement error. The evaluation of the system has revealed a polynomial equation as a corrective factor for weight and shows an improvement of the error from 2% of the raw measurements to 0.6% of the corrected measurements, while regarding the calculation of the weight from the measurement of the droplets, it shows an error of 1.6%. The proposed system contributes directly to both the valuable time of the medical staff and the improvement of patient care. The evolution of technology should be applied to the health sector and low-cost and internet of things (IoT) devices can be applied to healthcare after thorough evaluation and calibration procedures.