Abstract
Monitoring people's health is useful for enhancing the care provided to them by others or self-management of health. This article is a survey of the latest research on monitoring parameters indicating a person's current health or having potential to affect the person's health in future, using various physical sensors. These sensors include accelerometers, gyroscopes, electromyography sensors, fiber optic sensors, textile electrodes, thermistors, infrared sensors, force sensors, and photo diodes. The health parameters monitored include heart rate, respiration rate, weight, body mass index, calories burnt, pressure distribution, diet, blood pressure, blood glucose, oxygen saturation, posture, duration of sleep, quality of sleep, hand movement, body temperature, skin conductance, exposure to ultraviolet light, adherence to medication-intake schedule, gait characteristics, and steps taken. The population monitored includes elderly people, miners, stroke survivors, osteoarthritis patients, people suffering from anorexia nervosa, obese people, people with Parkinson's disease, people having panic attacks, and wheelchair users.
TopMonitoring Multiple Health Parameters
Sun and others (Sun et al., 2014) report on a wristwatch prototype which records heart rate and skin temperature. A significant number of people working in information technology (IT) sector spend a lot of time using computers. Maria and Munipriya (Maria & Munipriya, 2011) report the following work-related health problems in this population: fatigue, back pain, upper-body pain, eye strain, hand or wrist pain, neck pain, watery eyes, redness or burning sensation or itching in eyes, and soreness in hand or arm. Posture, time spent in front of a computer without any break, brightness, contrast, positioning, height, and width of the monitor, and position of the computer user’s chair are relevant to the health of IT professionals. A system for monitoring and evaluating gestures and postures of IT professionals using web cameras fixed to their desktops/laptops, and displaying warning messages on desktops/laptops is proposed in (Maria & Munipriya, 2011).