R-Mon: An mhealth Tool for Real-Time Respiratory Monitoring during Pandemics and Self-Isolation

Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a serious disease with life-Threatening clinical manifestations and a high mortality rate. One of the major complications of this disease is the rapid and dangerous pulmonary deterioration that can lead to critical pneumonia conditions, resulting in death. The current healthcare system around the world faces the potential problem of lacking resources to assist a large number of patients at the same time; then, the non-critical patients are mostly referred to perform self-isolation/quarantine at home. With the advancement of IoT and Cloud technologies now it is possible to monitor patient's symptoms in real-Time to detect and quickly report sudden and dangerous changes to the healthcare provider. In this paper, we propose the concept of R-Mon, an mhealth tool for diagnostic-Assistance, and real-Time communication with healthcare providers that can be used with COVID-19 patients in self-isolation and any other disease in pandemic situations. We propose the use of a pressure sensor under the bed that can monitor the respiratory rate and pulmonary function of the patients. We also propose a framework in which the detected information can be directly seen by the practitioner for the decision-making process. We envision that this kind of mhealth tool and framework can be implemented for better health response in future pandemics.