5,151 research outputs found
An Empirical Study Comparing Unobtrusive Physiological Sensors for Stress Detection in Computer Work.
Several unobtrusive sensors have been tested in studies to capture physiological reactions to stress in workplace settings. Lab studies tend to focus on assessing sensors during a specific computer task, while in situ studies tend to offer a generalized view of sensors' efficacy for workplace stress monitoring, without discriminating different tasks. Given the variation in workplace computer activities, this study investigates the efficacy of unobtrusive sensors for stress measurement across a variety of tasks. We present a comparison of five physiological measurements obtained in a lab experiment, where participants completed six different computer tasks, while we measured their stress levels using a chest-band (ECG, respiration), a wristband (PPG and EDA), and an emerging thermal imaging method (perinasal perspiration). We found that thermal imaging can detect increased stress for most participants across all tasks, while wrist and chest sensors were less generalizable across tasks and participants. We summarize the costs and benefits of each sensor stream, and show how some computer use scenarios present usability and reliability challenges for stress monitoring with certain physiological sensors. We provide recommendations for researchers and system builders for measuring stress with physiological sensors during workplace computer use
Assistive technology to monitor activity, health and wellbeing in old age : The wrist wearable unit in the USEFIL project
This paper presents the assistive technology used to perform activity monitoring in the USEFIL (Unobtrusive Smart Environments for Independent Living) project, particularly the wrist wearable unit. USEFIL includes a number of activity monitoring devices alongside some condition specific medical devices, a dedicated electronic health record database and communication backend. The system is designed as an assistive technology to provide long-term monitoring for older people in their own home and communicate the data that is gathered into a decision support system that can be used by the older person's carers to improve their care and allow them to remain independent in their own home. The wrist wearable device developed for the USEFIL project, the various health indicators extracted from its inbuilt sensors and how these are used to understand the health and wellbeing of the older person are discussed in this paper
Pump less wearable microfluidic device for real time pH sweat monitoring
This paper presents the fabrication and the performance of a novel, wearable, robust, flexible and disposable
microfluidic device which incorporates micro-Light Emitting Diodes (μ-LEDs) as a detection system, for
monitoring in real time mode the pH of the sweat generated during an exercising period
BIOTEX-biosensing textiles for personalised healthcare management.
Textile-based sensors offer an unobtrusive method of continually monitoring physiological parameters during daily activities. Chemical analysis of body fluids, noninvasively, is a novel and exciting area of personalized wearable healthcare systems. BIOTEX was an EU-funded project that aimed to develop textile sensors to measure physiological parameters and the chemical composition of body fluids, with a particular interest in sweat. A wearable sensing system has been developed that integrates a textile-based fluid handling system for sample collection and transport with a number of sensors including sodium, conductivity, and pH sensors. Sensors for sweat rate, ECG, respiration, and blood oxygenation were also developed. For the first time, it has been possible to monitor a number of physiological parameters together with sweat composition in real time. This has been carried out via a network of wearable sensors distributed around the body of a subject user. This has huge implications for the field of sports and human performance and opens a whole new field of research in the clinical setting
Implementing and Evaluating a Wireless Body Sensor System for Automated Physiological Data Acquisition at Home
Advances in embedded devices and wireless sensor networks have resulted in
new and inexpensive health care solutions. This paper describes the
implementation and the evaluation of a wireless body sensor system that
monitors human physiological data at home. Specifically, a waist-mounted
triaxial accelerometer unit is used to record human movements. Sampled data are
transmitted using an IEEE 802.15.4 wireless transceiver to a data logger unit.
The wearable sensor unit is light, small, and consumes low energy, which allows
for inexpensive and unobtrusive monitoring during normal daily activities at
home. The acceleration measurement tests show that it is possible to classify
different human motion through the acceleration reading. The 802.15.4 wireless
signal quality is also tested in typical home scenarios. Measurement results
show that even with interference from nearby IEEE 802.11 signals and microwave
ovens, the data delivery performance is satisfactory and can be improved by
selecting an appropriate channel. Moreover, we found that the wireless signal
can be attenuated by housing materials, home appliances, and even plants.
Therefore, the deployment of wireless body sensor systems at home needs to take
all these factors into consideration.Comment: 15 page
360 Quantified Self
Wearable devices with a wide range of sensors have contributed to the rise of
the Quantified Self movement, where individuals log everything ranging from the
number of steps they have taken, to their heart rate, to their sleeping
patterns. Sensors do not, however, typically sense the social and ambient
environment of the users, such as general life style attributes or information
about their social network. This means that the users themselves, and the
medical practitioners, privy to the wearable sensor data, only have a narrow
view of the individual, limited mainly to certain aspects of their physical
condition.
In this paper we describe a number of use cases for how social media can be
used to complement the check-up data and those from sensors to gain a more
holistic view on individuals' health, a perspective we call the 360 Quantified
Self. Health-related information can be obtained from sources as diverse as
food photo sharing, location check-ins, or profile pictures. Additionally,
information from a person's ego network can shed light on the social dimension
of wellbeing which is widely acknowledged to be of utmost importance, even
though they are currently rarely used for medical diagnosis. We articulate a
long-term vision describing the desirable list of technical advances and
variety of data to achieve an integrated system encompassing Electronic Health
Records (EHR), data from wearable devices, alongside information derived from
social media data.Comment: QCRI Technical Repor
Affective Medicine: a review of Affective Computing efforts in Medical Informatics
Background: Affective computing (AC) is concerned with emotional interactions performed with and through computers. It is defined as “computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotions”. AC enables investigation and understanding of the relation between human emotions and health as well as application of assistive and useful technologies in the medical domain. Objectives: 1) To review the general state of the art in AC and its applications in medicine, and 2) to establish synergies between the research communities of AC and medical informatics. Methods: Aspects related to the human affective state as a determinant of the human health are discussed, coupled with an illustration of significant AC research and related literature output. Moreover, affective communication channels are described and their range of application fields is explored through illustrative examples. Results: The presented conferences, European research projects and research publications illustrate the recent increase of interest in the AC area by the medical community. Tele-home healthcare, AmI, ubiquitous monitoring, e-learning and virtual communities with emotionally expressive characters for elderly or impaired people are few areas where the potential of AC has been realized and applications have emerged. Conclusions: A number of gaps can potentially be overcome through the synergy of AC and medical informatics. The application of AC technologies parallels the advancement of the existing state of the art and the introduction of new methods. The amount of work and projects reviewed in this paper witness an ambitious and optimistic synergetic future of the affective medicine field
Fall Prediction and Prevention Systems: Recent Trends, Challenges, and Future Research Directions.
Fall prediction is a multifaceted problem that involves complex interactions between physiological, behavioral, and environmental factors. Existing fall detection and prediction systems mainly focus on physiological factors such as gait, vision, and cognition, and do not address the multifactorial nature of falls. In addition, these systems lack efficient user interfaces and feedback for preventing future falls. Recent advances in internet of things (IoT) and mobile technologies offer ample opportunities for integrating contextual information about patient behavior and environment along with physiological health data for predicting falls. This article reviews the state-of-the-art in fall detection and prediction systems. It also describes the challenges, limitations, and future directions in the design and implementation of effective fall prediction and prevention systems
A Review of Wireless Body Area Networks for Medical Applications
Recent advances in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology,
integrated circuits, and wireless communication have allowed the realization of
Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs). WBANs promise unobtrusive ambulatory
health monitoring for a long period of time and provide real-time updates of
the patient's status to the physician. They are widely used for ubiquitous
healthcare, entertainment, and military applications. This paper reviews the
key aspects of WBANs for numerous applications. We present a WBAN
infrastructure that provides solutions to on-demand, emergency, and normal
traffic. We further discuss in-body antenna design and low-power MAC protocol
for WBAN. In addition, we briefly outline some of the WBAN applications with
examples. Our discussion realizes a need for new power-efficient solutions
towards in-body and on-body sensor networks.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, and 3 tables. In V3, the manuscript is converted
to LaTe
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