Development of a Remote Upper Arm Temperature Monitoring Device in Adults

Introduction: Patient health condition diagnosis and monitoring using conventional healthcare services delivery is typically time-consuming tiring, expensive and limited in accuracy. Wearable Technology (WT) based on flexible electronics has gained tremendous attention in recent years for Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) due to its satisfactory features. This technology provides opportunity for disease pre-diagnosis and immediate therapy in order to avoid health crisis. Temperature, as one of the pivotal body vitals for timely detection of abnormality in the human body needs to be continuously measured and monitored. With advent of WT, increase in population, increase in epidemics globally, need for more patient’s participation, increased demand on Physician time and service delivery call for RPM. Attention. Global epidemiology and burden of fever necessitated the Development of Remote Upper Arm Temperature Monitoring (RUATM) Device in adults. Methodology: The device employed DS18D20 temperature sensor, an ESP32 microcontroller, 16*2 Liquid Crystal Display and RUATM server of the developed RUATM mobile application (RUATMiOS). Graphic User Interface (GUI) of RUATMiOS is fed from the system server through its socket. Remotely located physician can access temperature readings of the client on android phones and personal computers for remote monitoring of the patient’s health condition. The RUATM system was tested on 24 individuals from University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan under supervision of a medical doctor. Its workability, sensitivity, specificity and accuracy was determined. Moreover, its performances compliance with OMCare digital clinical thermometer, an existing was conducted to validate employability of the device in medical service delivery. Results and Discussion: Results of clinical trial of the RUATM system produced Mean readings of 35.41± 0.74 and 35.99± 0.51 for RUATM and clinical thermometer, respectively. Pearson correlation of performance of RUATM system on the digital clinical thermometer was 0.67. This correlation coefficient depicts strong relationships with readings from clinical thermometer. This implies that the developed RUATM device can be effectively used for temperature measurement, and remote temperature monitoring in patients. Recommendations: The developed RUATM system can be enhanced through miniaturization of its size and weight, increased precision, for improved affordability and market competitiveness. GSM communication can also be incorporated because of areas without internet connectivity.