An Automatic soiled linen detection prototype for hospital ward caregivers
Date
2019
Authors
Akumonyo, Lidonde James
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
The well-being of a hospital patient is highly prioritized by the provision of a clean and safe environment with the aim of improving the rate of patient’s recovery. Continuous patients’ checks and alert mechanisms are essential to the caregiver in aiding them to ensure a clean and safe environment is maintained for the patient receiving medical care from the facility. The existing system used relies on scheduled visits done by nurses during their shifts to assess the nature of the patients whilst assisting them where necessary. This process is usually cumbersome and prone to neglect which leads to patients getting new hospital-acquired infections. In other cases, the unpredictable nature of patient’s condition may result to high incontinence where the patient may soil linen more frequently due to deterioration of their health condition and this would need to have the caregiver promptly notified when such an event occurs to have the patient linen changed. With this challenge experienced, the study aims to come up with a solution termed as a soiled linen detection prototype to alert hospital ward caregivers of soiled linen. During this process, the researcher employed the use of experimental research to determine the variables essential in soiled linen detection. Together with this prototyping and use of questionnaires were employed to fine tune the system into meeting the users’ requirement as a solution to soiled linen detection challenge. The solution created integrates the idea of IoT with Wireless Sensor Networks. Hospital beds will be attached to humidity and gas sensors that are connected to the IoT device. The bedlinen will cover the sensors and they will transmit the hydrogen sulphide gas levels and humidity levels to the central cloud storage system whenever the safety levels have been exceeded. Upon successfully sending of the information from the IOT equipment the web application automatically picks data entry made to the cloud database storage and displays it on the client GUI awaiting to be handled by the caregiver. The client app GUI is used by the assigned caregiver and the nurse at the central ward station to notify and locate the bed that requires attention allowing proactive response to the patient who requires bedlinen change. The results of this was a prompt notification soiled linen prototype that was able to give notification as soon as the gas and humidity levels were exceeded
Description
Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) at Strathmore University
Keywords
Soiled Linen, Hospital Ward, Caregivers