QChain Node: an IoT based Mote for Remote Medicine Quality Monitoring

Abstract

[eng] Several monitoring tools and systems are available today that can be utilized to keep medicine quality under control while being stored in medical environments. Those tools are mandatory with medications that are sensitive to changes in the environment, light, or mechanical stress due to the number of critical factors that must be watched out. When the patient is discharged from the hospital because he/she can carry out the treatment at home, he/she must take the medications with him/her, which, as has been demonstrated, are not stored diligently, in large part because the equipment available in our homes does not perform adequately. In this paper we present a proposal for a sensor node capable of remotely monitoring the conservation status of the drug. The solution is integrated into a possible IoT platform that would provide real-time data to the hospital pharmacy department. The design of the node, the characteristics of the contemplated sensors and the implementation are detailed in this work. The validation results show that an efficient use of the battery has been achieved and a very versatile solution to respond to multiple remote monitoring scenarios.