A robust remote health monitoring and data processing system for rural area with limited internet access

Emerging technologies such as Body Sensor Networks (BSN) and Remote Health Monitoring Systems (RHMS) allow for collecting continuous data from patients, providing clinical interventions to improve patients' physical and mental health, and to prevent medically adverse events. Although RHMS have shown promises in reducing healthcare costs and improving quality of care, designing a robust, flexible and portable RHMS that can adequately handle technological and environmental restrictions such as data communication disruptions caused by low-quality infrastructure is by large an open problem. In this paper we present an end-to-end robust RHMS including body area networks for monitoring and management of patients with HIV/AIDS. The proposed system includes an Android application to be installed on mobile devices to collect and preprocess data from patients, a wireless body area network to handle data communication and transmission, and a backend cloud-based server coupled with a NoSQL database and web-portal for data visualization and analysis. The proposed system addresses a number of serious challenges in RHMS design including data transmission and synchronization in a body area network with poor network connection (e.g. in a rural area with poor or unavailable internet connection). The proposed system is fully implemented and deployed in a large research study involving 600 women living with HIV/AIDS in rural parts of India. The results demonstrate the effectiveness, reliability, robustness, and accuracy of the proposed RHMS.