Trade-off between System Effectiveness and Context Constraints in the Design of an IoT System Giving Access to Health Care in African Rural Villages

Aging population is a global concern, but the situation is even worst in developing countries where the migration of the active population from rural areas to major cities makes the elderly left in their home in the village, usually assisted by close relatives who take care of them. Far distance to accessing good health facilities provided in the city hospital usually results to the untimely death of people suffering from treatable and manageable diseases like diabetes, malaria, high blood pressure and waterborne diseases. In this paper, we present the design concept of a system for preventing and controlling people’s health conditions; it exploits the possibilities of the Internet of Things technology, still trying to find a convenient balance between effectiveness, reliability and context limitations that require a cheap, affordable and easily configurable system.