Accelerometer Health Monitoring

Mobile Health Monitoring requires the collection of health data using various methods. Some types of data can be manually entered (for example, a person's weight or calories), other types of data can be collected through a wireless zigbee or bluetooth interface from body sensors. And then there are other types of health related data that can be collected using the accelerometer capability that is available on some of the smartphones these days. For example, the iPhone has a built-in LIS302DL 3-axis accelerometer. The accelerometer measures the vibration or motion of the phone; this data can be collected and transmitted to a server for processing and analysis.

One of the interesting health monitoring applications using the accelerometer is that of remote pregnancy monitoring. A pregnant female may require periodic evaluation of her physiological condition, as well as the in-utero fetus, during pregnancy. Under normal circumstances, this monitoring will require visits to the physician's office. A mobile phone with built-in accelerometer can be used to remotely monitoring some of the conditions and report the results to the physician's office, thereby reducing the number of visits to the doctor's office. The phone can be placed on the exterior of the patient's abdomen and record some of the internal movements using the motion detection capability provided by the accelerometer.