Vital Sensory Kit For Use With Telemedicine In Developing Countries

In many developing countries, a large percentage of the population lacks access to adequate healthcare. This is especially true in India where close to 70% of the population lives in rural areas and has little to no access to hospitals or clinics. People living in rural India often times cannot afford to pay to see a doctor should they need to make the journey to a hospital. Telemedicine, a breakthrough in the past couple decades, has broken down the barrier between the patient and the physician. It has slowly been implemented in India to make doctors more available to patients through the use of video conferences and other forms of communication. A compact and affordable kit has been developed that will be used to take a patient’s blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose concentration and oxygen saturation. Our most novel contribution is the non-invasive glucose sensor that will use a near-infrared LED and photodiode in the patient’s earlobe. Currently millions of diabetics do this by pricking their finger. By wirelessly sending data results from the vital sign kit, the first essential part of a treatment can be carried out via wireless communication, saving the doctor and patient time and money

Review of sensors for remote patient monitoring

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) of physiological measurements can provide an efficient method and high quality care to patients. The physiological signals measurement is the initial and the most important factor in RPM. This paper discusses the characteristics of the most popular sensors, which are used to obtain vital clinical signals in prevalent RPM systems. The sensors discussed in this paper are used to measure ECG, heart sound, pulse rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure and respiration rate, which are treated as the most important vital data in patient monitoring and medical examination

A flexible organic reflectance oximeter array.

Transmission-mode pulse oximetry, the optical method for determining oxygen saturation in blood, is limited to only tissues that can be transilluminated, such as the earlobes and the fingers. The existing sensor configuration provides only single-point measurements, lacking 2D oxygenation mapping capability. Here, we demonstrate a flexible and printed sensor array composed of organic light-emitting diodes and organic photodiodes, which senses reflected light from tissue to determine the oxygen saturation. We use the reflectance oximeter array beyond the conventional sensing locations. The sensor is implemented to measure oxygen saturation on the forehead with 1.1% mean error and to create 2D oxygenation maps of adult forearms under pressure-cuff-induced ischemia. In addition, we present mathematical models to determine oxygenation in the presence and absence of a pulsatile arterial blood signal. The mechanical flexibility, 2D oxygenation mapping capability, and the ability to place the sensor in various locations make the reflectance oximeter array promising for medical sensing applications such as monitoring of real-time chronic medical conditions as well as postsurgery recovery management of tissues, organs, and wounds

Ear oximeter-transducer monitors four physiological responses

Device monitors blood oxygen saturation, blood pressure, pulse rate, and pulse-pressure curve during conditions of high stress in simulated space flight

Methods and systems for extracting venous pulsation and respiratory information from photoplethysmographs

A system and method for separating a venous component and an arterial component from a red signal and an infrared signal of a PPG sensor is provided. The method uses the second order statistics of venous and arterial signals to separate the venous andarterial signals. After reliable separation of the venous and thearterial component signals,the component signals can be used for different purposes. In a preferred embodiment, the respiratory signal, pattern, and rate are extracted from the separated venous component and a reliable ?ratio of ratios? is extracted for SpO, using only the arterial component of the PPG signals. The disclosed embodiments enable real-time continuous monitoring of respiration pattern/rate and site-independentarterial oxygen saturation.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Ontology based annotation of contextualized vital signs

Representing the kinetic state of a patient (posture, motion, and activity) during vital sign measurement is an important part of continuous monitoring applications, especially remote monitoring applications. In contextualized vital sign representation, the measurement result is presented in conjunction with salient measurement context metadata. We present an automated annotation system for vital sign measurements that uses ontologies from the Open Biomedical Ontology Foundry (OBO Foundry) to represent the patient’s kinetic state at the time of measurement. The annotation system is applied to data generated by a wearable personal status monitoring (PSM) device. We demonstrate how annotated PSM data can be queried for contextualized vital signs as well as sensor algorithm configuration parameters

Systems and methods for physiological signal enhancement and biometric extraction using non-invasive optical sensors

A system and method for signal processing to remove unwanted noise components including: (i) wavelength-independent motion artifacts such as tissue, bone and skin effects, and (ii) wavelength-dependent motion artifact/noise components such as venous blood pulsation and movement due to various sources including muscle pump, respiratory pump and physical perturbation. Disclosed are methods, analytics, and their uses for reliable perfusion monitoring, arterial oxygen saturation monitoring, heart rate monitoring during daily activities and in hospital settings and for extraction of physiological parameters such as respiration information, hemodynamic parameters, venous capacity, and fluid responsiveness. The system and methods disclosed are extendable to include monitoring platforms for perfusion, hypoxia, arrhythmia detection, airway obstruction detection and sleep disorders including apnea.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

Adopting Modern Fitness Sensors to Improve Patient Care

Technology found in modern fitness sensor devices advances at a very fast pace and current smartwatches are on the verge of closing the gap between being an everyday object and a medically reliable monitoring device. In this thesis, the possibility of adopting fitness sensor devices in medical environments is explored and use cases in which sensor devices can be deployed are examined. Their successful transfer from the area of sports to medical analyses and treatments may help patients to deal with their illnesses and to improve the level of patient care found today. Privacy and security issues as well as social concerns associated with such a disruptive evolution are discussed and practical tests of a pulse oximeter in various activities of daily living are conducted. The collected health data depicts a close representation of the performed activities. Furthermore, three types of fitness sensor devices were used in different real-life scenarios and the resulting data is compared. The results show that the recorded vital signs may differ significantly, depending on the scenario. ii

PDA based ambulatory pulse oximeter

The main aim of the research was to develop an ambulatory pulse oximeter which can be used to monitor the SpO2 heart rate (HR) and plethsymograph (PPG) waveform of a person. To achieve this, an algorithm was developed in LabVIEW 8.0 to extract the HR, SpO2 and PPG data from a Nonin Xpod device, Nonin Medical, Inc. LabVIEW PDA software was developed to make it compatible with the PDA. LabVIEW software was also developed for sending the data to the PDA via Bluetooth Pulse Oximeter commercialized by Nonin Medical Company. Using this algorithm, data was collected from three different sensors, namely finger, ear and reflectance sensor which can be used in many places. All the three sensors were attached each at a time during different activities and movements which included hand movement, vertical and horizontal head movement, twisting, walking and spot jogging. Comparative study of each sensor was made to conclude which sensor was a preferred choice over the other during each activity. Comparative study among the sensors was also done to observe which sensor worked better with HR and SpO2 monitoring along with motion. Various tests such as supine-stand test and mental activity were performed to observe the changes in the blood flow of a person using the PPG waveform. From the results obtained it was concluded that different sensors were preferred during different movements. For monitoring HR with motion, a reflectance sensor worked better, while the finger sensor for SpO2 monitoring with motion. Results obtained from the supine stand and mental activity tests were as per the expected results