A Frugal Wireless Cardiovascular Monitoring System for Senior Dogs

In this paper, a low-cost digital solution to monitor cardiovascular anomalies in dogs of advanced age. Heart anomalies is one of the most common health concerns in dogs of advanced age. Difficulty in breathing, exercise intolerance and unexplained vomiting are signs of possible heart problems in dogs. When these symptoms are present, dogs should constantly be monitored by veterinarian. However, the monitoring and control of these illnesses are often expensive, and coverage is limited in some regions. The proposed system uses a smart collar with sensors such as accelerometer and gyroscope to obtain physiological variables of the pet directly and indirectly in real time. In a traditional scenario, the veterinarian uses specialized instruments to measure physiological variables onsite, but the prototype allows remote monitoring. The proposed system integrates 4 phases: 1) Data collection through wearable sensors, 2) Data reception in the mobile application, 3) Processing and storage of physiological variables and 4) Generation of reports and alerts in the mobile application. Preliminary results indicate that the prototype could be a promising digital solution to improve the monitoring and control of these anomalies among dogs. Finally, a discussion of the challenges of development and implementing these solutions is presented.