ABSTRACT
Since 2020, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a substantial impact on all community sectors worldwide, particularly the health care sector. Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at risk of COVID-19 infection due to occupational exposure to infectious patients, visitors, and staff. Contact tracing of close physical interaction is an essential control measure, especially in hospitals, to prevent onward transmission during an outbreak event. In this article, we propose an IoT-based contact tracing system for subject identification, interaction tracking and data transmission in hospital wards. The system, based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices, tracks the duration of interactions between different HCWs, and the time each HCW spends within the patient rooms using additional information from proximity sensors in the hallway or on the door frame of the patient room. The collected data are transferred via Long Range (LoRa) wireless technology and further analyzed to inform infection prevention activities. The suggested system’s performance is evaluated in a COVID-19 patient ward with both standard and negative pressure isolation rooms, and the current system’s capabilities and future research prospects are briefly discussed. IEEE
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is a major global health threat, and Health Care Workers (HCWs) may have an increased risk of infection through occupational exposure. In the case of hospital outbreaks, contact tracing of close physical interaction needs to be performed. In this article, we propose an IoT-connected contact tracing system based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons for subject identification and data transmission. The proposed system consists of BLE receivers, BLE wearable tags, an edge gateway and a cloud server. The system records interaction information such as entering/exiting time of an HCW to isolation rooms in the hospital. The collected data will be further analyzed to inform infection prevention policies. The performance of the proposed system is assessed through qualitative and quantitative experimental results. Finally, the capabilities of the current system and future research directions are briefly discussed.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is a major global health threat, and Health Care Workers (HCWs) may have an increased risk of infection through occupational exposure. In the case of hospital outbreaks, contact tracing of close physical interaction needs to be performed. In this article, we propose an IoT-connected contact tracing system based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons for subject identification and data transmission. The proposed system consists of BLE receivers, BLE wearable tags, an edge gateway and a cloud server. The system records interaction information such as entering/exiting time of an HCW to isolation rooms in the hospital. The collected data will be further analyzed to inform infection prevention policies. The performance of the proposed system is assessed through qualitative and quantitative experimental results. Finally, the capabilities of the current system and future research directions are briefly discussed. © 2020 IEEE.