Research Article
A Unified Low-Cost Embedded IoT Framework for Concurrent Physiological and Ambient Air-Quality Monitoring in Patient-Centred Care
Issue:
Volume 14, Issue 2, June 2026
Pages:
26-37
Received:
8 July 2026
Accepted:
23 July 2026
Published:
10 August 2026
DOI:
10.11648/j.iotcc.20261402.11
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Abstract: Continuous tracking of a patient's vital signs is now routine, but the air the patient actually breathes is seldom measured by the same inexpensive device, even though air quality is a modifiable factor that affects cardiorespiratory health. Because embedded health monitors and air-quality monitors are usually built as separate products, a caregiver must install, power, and reconcile two devices, and the vital-sign readings arrive without any picture of the environment that produced them. To close this gap, we describe a single low-cost embedded platform that combines a physiological subsystem (a pulse sensor and an LM35 temperature sensor) with an environmental subsystem based on an MQ-135 gas sensor. Both share one Arduino Uno (ATmega328P) edge node, and an ESP32 Wi-Fi gateway relays the readings to the ThingSpeak cloud. A 10-bit ADC digitises every channel; the firmware converts the counts into clinical and air-quality indices, checks them against calibrated thresholds, and reports the outcome through a 16×2 I2C LCD, a graduated LED and PWM-buzzer alert stage, and a USART log. Each subsystem was built in hardware and checked against a Proteus simulation. In testing, the physiological subsystem separated normal, tachycardic, and febrile states cleanly (pulse 72-120 bpm; temperature 98.2-101.2°F), and the environmental subsystem classified all four severity levels correctly across five controlled gas trials, with an 8-12 s response time and full simulation-hardware agreement. The assembled prototype costs roughly BDT 1,347 (≈ USD 12.3). Three contributions follow: a single-node architecture serving both domains, a shared threshold-classification and multi-modal alerting scheme that works across them, and a cost model grounded in the actual build. Placing patient vitals and ambient air quality on one affordable node lets the device raise context-aware alerts—such as calling for ventilation when pollutant levels climb near a vulnerable patient—which makes it a practical fit for homes, clinics, and resource-limited settings.
Abstract: Continuous tracking of a patient's vital signs is now routine, but the air the patient actually breathes is seldom measured by the same inexpensive device, even though air quality is a modifiable factor that affects cardiorespiratory health. Because embedded health monitors and air-quality monitors are usually built as separate products, a caregive...
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,
Md. Mohiminul Hasan,
Bishal Kumar Paul,
Md. Tamzid Rahman,
Dhrubo Roy,
Protik Parvez Sheikh
