Development of an IoT-Enabled Electronic Hospital Bed with Integrated Patient Monitoring for Resource-Constrained Settings

Hospital beds are central to modern clinical care, yet sub-Saharan healthcare systems still rely largely on manually operated frames that lack automated positioning, integrated patient monitoring, and resilience to unstable power supply. This paper presents the design and implementation of an Internet-of-Things (IoT)-enabled electronic hospital bed engineered for the operational realities of Nigerian healthcare facilities. The system integrates a custom mild-steel articulated frame, two 12 V linear actuators, an ESP32-WROOM-32 microcontroller, a suite of environmental / biomedical sensors for heart rate, SpO_₂, body temperature, room temperature and room humidity, an ESP32-CAM module for visual telepresence, and a hybrid mains-and-battery power architecture with a 12 V 80 Ah lead-acid backup. In addition to bedside control, a custom web dashboard provides remote bidirectional control and real-time visualization of patient vitals on computer systems or smart phones. Experimental evaluation revealed a vertical lift velocity of 6.35 mm/s, finite-element predicted factor of safety of 1.37 against a 1,737 N service load, command-to-action latency of 180ms, emergency-stop response below 50ms, sensor accuracy within manufacturer specifications, power-conversion efficiency of 86.27 %, and a battery autonomy exceeding 32 hours under typical intermittent clinical use. The prospect of clinically relevant electromechanical and IoT functionality using locally sourced materials and components for patient care in resource-constrained settings has been demonstrated.