ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses potential opportunities for the use of photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals in global health. Recently, the World Health Organization established a project called the “WHO Patient Safety Pulse Oximetry,” to improve the safety of anaesthesia care in operating rooms in low and middle-income countries. Based on a current literature scan, the proposed framework for PPG-based Point-Of-Care (POC) devices is the first of its kind. Recently, in 2014, researchers began to explore the relationship between biomedical engineering and how application of this science can improve global health. The aim, therefore, is to develop a comparably more simple algorithm that is reliable and accurate for tackling large data. Application of the “simple” approach can be investigated on PPG-based POC devices for noncommunicable diseases and global health care screening and diagnostics. Mining noisy biomedical signals can be challenging, and often requires precision and patience: at times, it can be tempting to give up before obtaining an informative waveform.
