Medical drip monitoring and auto-control system.

Abstract

With the increasing growth of population in Uganda, health care plays a vital role in leading a contented life. In hospitals, ensuring the patients’ safety is the most important thing. Hence automatic health monitoring systems are the most sought after because it gives precise information while reducing the stress of the medical practitioners and the attendants of the patients about missing certain critical data. Also, indicating when the intravenous fluid administered to the patient falls below a critical level is a tedious process and a tougher job. Monitoring the level of intravenous fluid level manually is a simpler job but if not done with utmost care may affect the health of the patient severely. This may lead to blood loss or backflow of blood to IV tube from their veins. If the bottle gets fully drained, air enters the tube and in turn into the vein, which may prove disastrous to the patient. So automating this system might prove really helpful. A system is designed such that if the Intravenous fluid reaches a critical level, it is sensed by the conduction pins set up and a solenoid valve quickly blocks the fluid flow, an alarm sounds and a message is sent to the nurses’ phone indicating the fluid level in the bottle. When this is done, the nurse can easily identify the patient and go there directly to change the bottle rather than keep checking every patient to notice if the fluid has reached the threshold level. This requires the use of conduction system placed at different levels of the bottle, solenoid valve connected on the tube between bottle and patient’s body and the GSM module, the buzzer and the two LEDS.