IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July/August 2022 - 41

3) Portability and comfort inwearing the system.
4) 24 h-tracking, remote monitoring extensive
back up history using IoT thus avoiding the
birth of a dead fetus.
5) Out-of and in-home pregnancy supervision
thus direct alerting the registered users with
that application.
6) Live monitoring by specialists can help to
deal with serious cases such as low heartbeats
or high altitudes where a fetus can be
in danger, thus avoidance of premature birth
and pregnant woman's health supervision.
7) Examination and diagnosis of two or more
patients at the same time by the same physician-doctor.
8)
Simultaneous and synchronized updating of
the physician in difficult work environments
(spatial planning).
9) Ease of operation by the end-user and the
clinician.
10) Multiple certified users can collect measurement
reports through the android application
with the main advantage of notifying the
patients and doctors at the same time.
11) This system does not require the user to manually
trigger an alert but it still provides the user
with the advantage of analyzing the situation.
12) On-time appointment with the doctor as s/
he knows the condition of the fetus/pregnant
woman.39
Study's Restrictions and Future
Prospects
This study is still in a preliminary stage and
some basic restrictions exist. Specifically: 1) The
system needs to be widely tested and consequently
to provide more measurements (more cases under
test), to ensure that no significant errors could
emerge during any kindofmeasurementconditions.
During these extensive measurements, system
results should be directly compared to those of the
golden standard system; 2) The system should be
upgraded with more enhanced sensors based on
low-cost target; 3) A longitudinal cohort study
should be conducted for comparing an important
number of significant edge technologies in this area.
Although the size of the microcontroller which
carries out the processing in the proposed system
is small, the development board size and weight
can be further reduced. Further improvement will
focus on evolving software and hardware to
July/August 2022
analyze thedata transmitted fromthe development
board and sensor. Likewise, we will focus on reduction
in energy consumption and further development
on sensitivity sensors. Currently the sensors
use a 3.3-5 volts input. Future improvements will
include lower power supplies and lower input voltage.
Along-life, light, and cheaper batterywithmaximum
current input and low input voltage will be an
ideal option especially if it can be charged with different
power sources. We also intend to focus on
software to enable two-way communications and
remotely change monitoring requirements based
on the individual situation and the doctor's intervention
immediately on-demand. The subsequent
development of future research is to allow the system
itself to intervene in maternal health remotely,
using algorithms based on machine learning. Also,
more samples from pregnant women will ensure
the most complete and effective usage of real time
communication with the doctor, ensuring safety
from illnesses such as COVID-19.
Conclusion
This article has established a base for the development
of a health-care monitoring environment
related to the monitoring of pregnant women using
aportablesystemwithremote sensing. Using a
wireless network and an application, a remote computer
or a smartphone can obtain, analyze, and
visualize data in real time. Further enhancements of
this preliminary version of the proposed system
could include more features, such as blood pressure,
glucose level, and psychological state detection
of a pregnant woman aswell as identification of
special clinical conditions. Such conditions may involve
maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia,18 fetal
acidosis detection,17 and risk of oxygen deprivation
during childbirth.19 By further improving the reliability
of features such as sensor nodes, security,
and data analysis, the proposed system configuration
accompaniedwith remotemonitoring software
may be useful for numerous applications on human
health care field, while simultaneously satisfying
autonomous needs of measuring and monitoring
under social isolation conditions, similar to those
imposeddueto theCOVID-19pandemic.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to warmly thank the Nursing
Unit and the Scientific Committee of General
Hospital of Kalamata for their permission and
41
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July/August 2022

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