Inductive power transfer for on-body sensors defining a design space for safe, wirelessly powered on-body health sensors

Pervasive Health: 9th International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, 20-23 May 2015, Istanbul, TurkeyDesigners of on-body health sensing devices face a difficult choice. They must either minimise the power consumption of devices, which in reality means reducing the sensing capabilities, or build devices that require regular battery changes or recharging. Both options limit the effectiveness of devices. Here we investigate an alternative. This paper presents a method of designing safe, wireless, inductive power transfer into on-body sensor products. This approach can produce sensing devices that can be worn for longer durations without the need for human intervention, whilst also having greater sensing and data capture capabilities. The paper addresses significant challenges in achieving this aim, in particular: device safety, sufficient power transfer, and human factors regarding device geometry. We show how to develop a device that meets stringent international safety guidelines for electromagnetic energy on the body and describe a design space that allows designers to make trade-offs that balance power transfer with other constraints, e.g. size and bulk, that affect the wearability of devices. Finally we describe a rapid experimental method to investigate the optimal placement of on-body devices and the actual versus theoretical power transfer for on-body, inductively powered devices. EPSR

Design and ergonomics of monitoring system for elderly

Abstract. This paper presents the study and the development of a tele-monitoring system with the aim to support elderly people living alone. The intent of our new system is to permanently connect the elderly with their relative and caregivers. The tele-monitoring system allows to continuously monitoring the subjects as they were in a hospital and, in case of anomalies in the health state, automatically share and alarm to caregivers and relatives. The continuous monitoring is done using two different sub-systems: wearable sen- sors for biomedical data collection and infrared video cameras for fall detection. The main goal of this study is to develop and test the system prototype not only from a functional point of view, but also from the user acceptability and usability point of view. For this reason this studies was based on a parallel development of acceptability and technical issues; this allows to create an ad-hoc tele-monitoring system for elderly