Wireless transmission of patient sensor data using smart textiles

Wearable electronic textiles, which can be integrated in clothing for indoor or outdoor wear, are used for communication, entertainment, health, and safety. In this paper, the application of smart textiles to monitor human health periodically is considered. The purpose of this study is to record the health data of a patient, namely body temperature and heart rate, and to transmit the data wirelessly in order to prevent missing the moment when a patient needs to be treated. The communication and data transmission are provided in two ways: by using the short message service (SMS), for sending text messages to a mobile phone, and by forming a web server, for transmission over the internet. Therefore, an appropriate contact person, who might be an advisor or a doctor, can be informed about the health status of the patient. The developed prototype realizes the communication, relying on the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) together with the IEEE 802.11 standard, and alerts the contact person by sending an SMS message to the contact person’s mobile phone using a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) module.