RePulmo: A Remote Pulmonary Monitoring System

Remote physiological monitoring is increasing in popularity with the evolution of technologies in the healthcare industry. However, the current solutions for remote monitoring of blood-oxygen saturation, one of the most common continuously monitored vital signs, either have inconsistent accuracy or are not secure for transmitting over the network. In this paper, we propose RePulmo, an open-source platform for secure and accurate remote pulmonary data monitoring. RePulmo satisfies both robustness and security requirements by utilizing hospital-grade pulse oximeter devices with multiple layers of security enforcement. We describe two applications of RePulmo, namely (1) a remote pulmonary monitoring system for infants to support the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) clinical trial; (2) a proof-of-concept of a low SpO2 smart alarm system

Development of a Signal Processing Library for Extraction of SpO2, HR, HRV, and RR from Photoplethysmographic Waveforms

Non-invasive remote physiological monitoring of soldiers on the battlefield has the potential to provide fast, accurate status assessments that are key to improving the survivability of critical injuries. The development of WPI’s wearable wireless pulse oximeter, designed for field-based applications, has allowed for the optimization of important hardware features such as physical size and power management. However, software-based digital signal processing (DSP) methods are still required to perform physiological assessments. This research evaluated DSP methods that were capable of providing arterial oxygen saturation (SpO2), heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and respiration rate (RR) measurements derived from data acquired using a single optical sensor. In vivo experiments were conducted to evaluate the accuracies of the processing methods across ranges of physiological conditions. Of the algorithms assessed, 13 SpO2 methods, 1 HR method, 6 HRV indices, and 4 RR methods were identified that provided clinically acceptable measurement accuracies and could potentially be employed in a wearable pulse oximeter

COMPREHENSIVE FRAMEWORKS FOR DECISION MAKING SUPPORT IN MEDICAL EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT

Throughout medical equipment life cycle, hospitals need to take decisions on medical equipment management based upon a set of different criteria. In fact, medical equipment acquisition, preventive maintenance, and replacement are considered the most important phases, accordingly a properly planned management for these issues is considered a key decision of medical equipment management. In this thesis, a set of frameworks were developed regarding acquisition, preventive maintenance, and replacement to improve management process of medical equipment. In practice, quality function deployment was proposed as a core method around which the frameworks were developed

Classifying obstructive sleep apnea using smartphones

AbstractObstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a serious sleep disorder which is characterized by frequent obstruction of the upper airway, often resulting in oxygen desaturation. The serious negative impact of OSA on human health makes monitoring and diagnosing it a necessity. Currently, polysomnography is considered the gold standard for diagnosing OSA, which requires an expensive attended overnight stay at a hospital with considerable wiring between the human body and the system. In this paper, we implement a reliable, comfortable, inexpensive, and easily available portable device that allows users to apply the OSA test at home without the need for attended overnight tests. The design takes advantage of a smatrphone’s built-in sensors, pervasiveness, computational capabilities, and user-friendly interface to screen OSA. We use three main sensors to extract physiological signals from patients which are (1) an oximeter to measure the oxygen level, (2) a microphone to record the respiratory effort, and (3) an accelerometer to detect the body’s movement. Finally, we examine our system’s ability to screen the disease as compared to the gold standard by testing it on 15 samples. The results showed that 100% of patients were correctly identified as having the disease, and 85.7% of patients were correctly identified as not having the disease. These preliminary results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed system when compared to the gold standard and emphasize the important role of smartphones in healthcare

Challenges and Limitation Analysis of an IoT-Dependent System for Deployment in Smart Healthcare Using Communication Standards Features

The use of IoT technology is rapidly increasing in healthcare development and smart healthcare system for fitness programs, monitoring, data analysis, etc. To improve the efficiency of monitoring, various studies have been conducted in this field to achieve improved precision. The architecture proposed herein is based on IoT integrated with a cloud system in which power absorption and accuracy are major concerns. We discuss and analyze development in this domain to improve the performance of IoT systems related to health care. Standards of communication for IoT data transmission and reception can help to understand the exact power absorption in different devices to achieve improved performance for healthcare development. We also systematically analyze the use of IoT in healthcare systems using cloud features, as well as the performance and limitations of IoT in this field. Furthermore, we discuss the design of an IoT system for efficient monitoring of various healthcare issues in elderly people and limitations of an existing system in terms of resources, power absorption and security when implemented in different devices as per requirements. Blood pressure and heartbeat monitoring in pregnant women are examples of high-intensity applications of NB-IoT (narrowband IoT), technology that supports widespread communication with a very low data cost and minimum processing complexity and battery lifespan. This article also focuses on analysis of the performance of narrowband IoT in terms of delay and throughput using singleand multinode approaches. We performed analysis using the message queuing telemetry transport protocol (MQTTP), which was found to be efficient compared to the limited application protocol (LAP) in sending information from sensors.Ministerio Español de Ciencia e Innovación under project number PID2020-115570GB-C22 (DemocratAI::UGR)Cátedra de Empresa Tecnología para las Personas (UGR-Fujitsu

Automated Home Oxygen Delivery for Patients with COPD and Respiratory Failure: A New Approach

Long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) has become standard care for the treatment of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other severe hypoxemic lung diseases. The use of new portable O-2 concentrators (POC) in LTOT is being expanded. However, the issue of oxygen titration is not always properly addressed, since POCs rely on proper use by patients. The robustness of algorithms and the limited reliability of current oximetry sensors are hindering the effectiveness of new approaches to closed-loop POCs based on the feedback of blood oxygen saturation. In this study, a novel intelligent portable oxygen concentrator (iPOC) is described. The presented iPOC is capable of adjusting the O-2 flow automatically by real-time classifying the intensity of a patient's physical activity (PA). It was designed with a group of patients with COPD and stable chronic respiratory failure. The technical pilot test showed a weighted accuracy of 91.1% in updating the O-2 flow automatically according to medical prescriptions, and a general improvement in oxygenation compared to conventional POCs. In addition, the usability achieved was high, which indicated a significant degree of user satisfaction. This iPOC may have important benefits, including improved oxygenation, increased compliance with therapy recommendations, and the promotion of PA

Photoplethysmogram Based Biometric Identification Incorporating Different Age and Gender Group

Biometric is the authentication and identification of a person by measuring or estimating their physiological characteristics. First generation biometric such as fingerprint, signature and voice have drawback and easily can be duplicated which lead to serious identity theft crime. Therefore, second generation of biometric was introduced by using bio-signal. This study evaluates the possibility of applying PPG as biometric identification system incorporating different age, gender group, and time variability. A total of 36 subjects were involved in this study consists of 18 males and 18 females for age difference and gender analysis. The PPG signals were taken in resting state by using pulse oximeter. The PPG signal was differentiated twice in order to form APG signal. These signals then undergo preprocessing and the segmentation process was done by using MATLAB. The highest peaks from the signal was used as reference point to determine the appropriate distance for one cycle of both signal. Then, the signals were classified by four commonly used classifiers which are Bayes Network, Naïve Bayes, Multilayer Perceptron, and Radial Basis Function. The outcome from this study suggested the accuracy up to 100% for different age group, 91.11% for female subjects and 95% for male subjects

Design of a Mobile Transceiver for Precision Indoor Location

This thesis documents the design and implementation process for the next generation of the WPI Precision Personnel Location (PPL) system hardware. The driving goal of the new hardware was to support a new method of radio frequency location developed at WPI referred to as Transactional Array Reconciliation Tomography (TART). This new method is based on a time of arrival (TOA) technique as opposed to the previous Singular Value Array Reconciliation Tomography (SART), which uses time difference of arrival (TDOA). The use of a TOA method requires additional timing information and necessitates a bidirectional (transmit and receive) multicarrier transaction. The design of the new transceiver that can function as both a mobile locator and a static reference unit is the main focus of this thesis. This redesign also addressed previous hardware issues that have been exposed through extensive use in real world testing