AutoImpilo: Smart Automated Health Machine using IoT to Improve Telemedicine and Telehealth Divya Ganesh, Gayathri Seshadri, Sumathi Sokkanarayanan, Panjavarnam Bose, Sharanya Rajan, Mithileysh Sathiyanarayanan Sri Sairam Engineering College, Chennai, India University Hospital Southampton NHS Trust, UK Research & Innovation, MIT Square, India & UK Email: Mithileysh@mitsquare.com Abstract—This paper deals with the modalities of the Smart Automated Health Machine (AHM) using Internet of Things (IoT), a user-friendly health machine with an interactive graph- ical user interface for medical necessities. It is a virtual health check-up/self-screening/test system, aimed at being the first point of contact for patient screening, to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, ECG, oxygen saturation, and visual acuity of patients. In case of emergency, a doctor will be available online through a video call, based on the severity of patients’ conditions, a call can be placed by a doctor to book an ambulance van or ambulance bike (based on the conditions). If a patient is unconscious, a direct call can be placed by any bystander or patient’s carer to book an ambulance. In non-emergency cases, medical appointments can be booked - the system will also dispense medicines based on the health conditions and/or doctor’s electronic prescription which can be selected among the list of available medicines. Each individual will be provided with a “smart health card”, which will keep a record of patients’ personal details, health conditions, prescriptions, and amount of tablets consumed. The AHM will provide all the necessary information, keep a record of different medical problems in different regions and different necessities required to be adopted. The system can also be called as “Self Healthcare Service (SHS)” or “Self Healthcare Units (SHU)” - the initiatives are part of sustainable development goals (SDG-3) proposed by United Nations. We conducted a pilot evaluation with the patients, nurses and doctors. As an overall outcome, the practitioners feel the system can be adopted in an area where medical facility is not available immediately. Adopting this system in such regions not only help in medical emergencies/epidemic/pandemic such as COVID, it also increases the percentage of survival. The system can also be adopted in hospitals, pharmacies, schools, public places like bus/train stations, airports, markets or any commercial areas, zones prone to accidents in rural and urban areas and other places that can be quite useful and helpful to the public. Index Terms—Healthcare; automated dispensing machine; au- tomated dispensing device; automated dispensing cabinet; au- tospense; vending machine; telemedicine; telehealth; internet of things; coronavirus; COVID. I. I NTRODUCTION Despite the huge differences between developing and devel- oped countries, healthcare access is the major issue in rural parts around the world. Even in countries where the majority of the population lives in rural areas, the resources are con- centrated on the cities. Thus, rural primary health care is one of the biggest challenges. Lack of quality infrastructure, poor health facilities, dearth of qualified medical functionaries, and non-access to basic medicines and medical facilities thwarts its reach to 60% of population in India. Due to lack of adequate health facilities, morbidity, mortality rates, diseases are on the rise. So this technology can be leveraged for improving health care in Rural India. The aim of the paper is to develop an automated system that can connect to doctors, hospitals or healthcare professionals in a quick time, which will control the spread of diseases and reduce the growing rates of mortality in rural areas. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the world’s biggest experiment in universal healthcare in the early 2018, a scheme that the government might grant 500 million people the entitlement to free health insurance which will be the world’s largest government funded health care programme. This new National Health Protection Scheme with a health coverage of up to INR 5 lakhs per family will be offered for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation which could benefit several vulnerable and under-privileged families. Affordable and accessible healthcare is the need of the hour and it remains to be seen what kind of technologies and digitalisation can support Below Poverty Line (BPL), Community Health Centre (CHC), and Primary Health Centre (PHC). To support the Government initiatives, we have developed a prototype solution, smart automated health machines (AHM) to improve the quality of healthcare in the rural belts of India. Automated Health Machines (AHMs), also called as Auto- mated Dispensing/Vending Machines, are devices which store medications safely, promote meticulous recording and help to keep a track of medications used in healthcare settings. AHMs have been added with electronic prescribing systems as an integral part of dispensing medicines in many hospitals abroad. In this setting, reported benefits include a reduction in nursing time spent in retrieving and administering medications [1]. Autospense [2], a stand-alone machine embedded with a customised software solutions, has the ability to manage and securely disburse medicines. The machine empowers the store owner to relieve a large group of issues/problems and community concerns based on the automated features. It records money related exchanges and manages inventory tracking inside a vigorously secured framework of cameras, locks and sensors with security, transparency, store proficiency, financial analysis and supply chain which provides a safe, 487 © IEEE 2020. This article is free to access and download, along with rights for full text and data mining, re-use and analysis