IMPLEMENTATION OF A LORA AND IOT- BASED HEALTH MONITORING AND ALARM SYSTEM FOR THE ELDERLY

The world’s population is ageing, and older people are more likely to have chronic illnesses with the need for ongoing monitoring and medical support. This paper proposes a health monitoring and alarm system for elderly people based on LoRa communication technology. By leveraging Long-Range (LoRa) technology and connecting to the ThingsSpeak Network, the system incorporates various sensors to capture real-time vital signs consisting of heart rate and body temperature of elderly individuals. This enables family members, medical experts, and authorized entities to access the health status of the system users and attend to their immediate needs. The research indicates the viability of leveraging the LoRa gateway and other support infrastructures, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), to deploy sensor networks for elderly monitoring. The IoT infrastructure is involved in data storage and transmission to The ThingsSpeak Network for monitoring users' critical metrics. The system utilizes two Lora WAN radio modules for long-range wireless communication, an ESP32 Wireless Module for the IoT feature, a microcontroller, temperature and pulse rate sensors. Raw data from the temperature and pulse rate sensors are sent to the receiver LoRa board and Thingspeak IoT platform from which a medical personnel can monitor. Additionally, the system has an alarm feature that, in the event of any unusual readings, alerts caretakers or medical experts. The LoRa communication technology provides long-range and low-power wireless communication, making it suitable for healthcare applications with various added advantages to the system such as continuous monitoring of vital signs, timely intervention to prevent emergencies, cost-effectiveness and easily integrated into existing healthcare systems.