DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A

LOW COST AND PORTABLE HEART

BEAT MONITOR FOR USE RURAL
CLINICS AND HEALTH CENTRES

PROBLEM
STATEMENT/DEFINITION
Heart beat rate is the number of times the heart
beats per minute bpm. It is an important
parameter in the human cardiovascular system.
Heart beat rate varies depending on a number
of factors like age, the physical condition, the
health condition.
Adult bpm averages 72bpm whilst for infants
and babies it is 120bpm
Heart beat rate assists in diagnosis and
tracking of medical conditions

Proposed Solution
The proposed heart beat monitor will
be low cost and portable.
Will be suitable for the family home,
rural health centres, clinics, sporting
facilites

AIMS
Design and build a low cost portable
heart beat monitor

OBJECTIVES
To make available to rural health
centres, clinics, family homes and
other facilities and affordable
portable microcontroller based
automatic heart beat rate monitor.

Current Situation
Most rural health centres and clinics
lack advanced technological
diagnosis equipment, resulting at
times wrong diagnosis.
Very few families or institutions own
their own heart beat rate monitors.

Block Diagram and System

Description
FLOW DIAGRAM

Start/Stop

PI

Fingertip

IR
LED

PHOTO
DIODE

Amplifier
and
Filtering
Circuit

LCD

PIC

System Description
Blood volume within a finger tip changes a
little with heart beat as blood is being
pumped.
An IR led and a photodiode is used as the
sensing mechanism. The IR led transmits
infra red light into the fingertip, placed
between the IR led and the photodiode.
Some of the infra red light is reflected
back, and the photo diode measures the
intensity of the reflected light

 The intensity of the reflected light depends

on the blood volume inside the fingertip.
Each heart beat slightly alters the amount
of reflected infrared light that can be
detected by the photodiode.
The photodiode output pulses are
amplified and filtered before being fed into
a microcontroller which counts the pulses
and displays on an LCD

Risk Assessment
The only risk associated with the
product is market penetration

Budget

Proposed budget is not more $ 200.00

Components are listed hereunder:
1. PIC 16F877 microcontroller
2. DC power supply 5 volts
3. PCB
4. Soldering Wire
5. Connecting wires
6. Amplifier and filtering circuit
IR transmitter and receiver set

 7. Resistors
8. capacitors
9. packaging case

Expected Results
Versatile low cost and portable heart
beat monitor

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