Sensor node design and evaluation for quality assurance of drugs
Maria Frontera-Bergas, Bartomeu Oliver-Riera, Josep Genovard-Oliver, Miguel Vinaixa-Fernández, Eugeni M. Isern-Riutort, Jaume Ramis, Miquel J. Roca-Adrover, B. Alorda · 2023
For ambient-sensitive pharmaceutical products, once they are dispensed to ambulatory patients, most of them are not being stored within recommended environmental conditions, entailing that the quality of the drug may degrade or no longer perform as originally intended. The proposed solution consists of a combination between a sensor node aimed at monitoring the medication once it is dispensed to a patient and a gateway installed in the patient residence to periodically capture the collected data from the node sensors. Furthermore, after collecting the data, the gateway will analyze and transmit it (via LoRa or WiFi) to a cloud server, where the sanitary team of the hospital can drive a monitoring of the quality of all drugs dispensed. Nevertheless, secure data sharing is a principal issue, not so focused on securing its privacy but in authenticating the communications. For that reason, the monitoring system introduces Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) signature in communication. This work intents to design and evaluate a system based on energy efficiency, taking care of privacy and authenticate assurance communication issue between the electronic parts of the proposed sensor node to guarantee the quality of pharmacological treatment, monitoring the drugs.