Non-invasive physiological wearable sensor real time monitoring

This project presents the implementation of reflectance Photoplethysmography (PPG) and thermo-chip sensor-¬based wireless architecture for a human health monitoring system. The thermo-¬‐chip sensor is used to continuously monitor the body temperature, while the reflectance PPG sensor is used to measure the heart rate by an optical technique that senses the blood volume change in the tissues and vessels. The sensors outputs are then given to the signal conditioning circuit used to filter the noises and amplify the signals. These signals are interfaced with a PIC microcontroller and data is transmitted to the node wirelessly using a Bluetooth module, which passes the data to a PC using a serial communication port. The readings measurement data are continuously monitor as a real time display on the graphic user interface (GUI). The proposed PPG sensor is used to overcome the limitations of current sensors such as restriction of measurement site and movement. The red and IR source lights are commonly used with current sensors and both light sources are easily corrupted with movement. However, in this study, the designed PPG sensor includes a green source light that uses as a robust wavelength against movement since the short wavelength penetrates near to the surface where small vessels present; thus, small vessels have less influence and minimal effect contamination on the PPG signal. In addition, the PPG sensor is designed to be in reflectance mode, which was found to help to apply and attach the reflectance sensor on different positions on the body such as finger, palm forehead and arm. With these approaches, users would be more comfortable and move more, without any restriction unlike the current transmission sensors which are commonly used on the finger. Furthermore, in this study, wireless monitoring is used without any restriction of nearby cable. The data obtained from the designed sensor were compared and analysed against commercial devices. The results show high agreement and no significant differences between data. The results and observations of this study demonstrate the goal of a high performance, wearable sensor that could be feasible and viable

Effect of Health Educational Guidelines on Self-Management Practices among Patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: A Scoping Review

Context: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a type of lung disease characterized as chronic lung airflow obstruction that interferes with normal respiration. The World Health Organization ranked it as the third leading cause of death. The evidence indicates that health education may improve patients' outcomes. Aim: This scoping review aimed to identify empirical evidence related to the effect of health educational guidelines on self-management practices among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease improve self-management practices. Methods: Studies published between 2015-2021 and recruited from authentic databases, including MEDLINE, PubMed, CINAHL, and EBSCO, were reviewed critically to explore the effect of health educational guidelines on patient self-management practices. Results: There are four themes generated from this scoping review. In this scoping review, 14.700 articles were searched. After checking for duplicates, 1344 articles were left to evaluate titles and abstracts. This evaluation left 301 articles for reading of full texts. Of these, 238 articles did not meet the aim of this review. Ten studies were included in the current review. Conclusion: This scoping review found that health educational guidelines consider an important need to improve self-management practices. Health education can improve patients' health outcomes and thus should be considered an essential component of the overall management of COPD

Knowledge and Practice of Adult Population Regarding Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) Infection is a serious worldwide community health problem. HBV is the 10th leading reason of global death. Tentatively, hepatitis B is a serious infection activated by HBV, which attacks the liver and can cause both acute and chronic disease. Aim: To explore the adult population’s Knowledge and Practice regarding Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Design: To achieve the aim of the current study a descriptive correlation design was used. Method: 402 adult Saudi male and female were recruited in the current study from different regions in Riyadh; data was collected by a questionnaire developed in English by the researchers then translated to Arabic, the tool consisted of 3 sections; section 1: Contained questions related to socio-demographic and biomedical data. Section2: contained 17 questions for knowledge assessment. Section3: contained 10 questions for practice assessment. Results: The study results showed that the total knowledge mean score  x̄ + SD was 22.23 + 4.22, the total practice  mean score  x̄ + SD was 7.43 + 4.19 and revealed that there was a statistically significant differences between total knowledge score and total practice score with  r = 0.113 and P = 0.023 and also showed a statistical significant differences between the level of education with knowledge r = 0.12 and P = 0.015 however, there is no statistical significant differences between the level of education and practice r =-0.04 and p=0.94. Conclusion: The knowledge regarding HBV among Saudi population in Riyadh was fair while the practice was poor, which indicated the need of more awareness and education campaigns regarding the good practice about HBV. Keywords: Hepatitis B virus (HBV), Knowledge, Practice

An applicable approach for extracting human heart rate and oxygen saturation during physical movements using a multi-wavelength illumination optoelectronic sensor system

© 2018 SPIE. The ability to gather physiological parameters such as heart rate (HR) and oxygen saturation (SpO2%) during physical movement allows to continuously monitor personal health status without disrupt their normal daily activities. Photoplethysmography (PPG) based pulse oximetry and similar principle devices are unable to extract the HR and SpO2% reliably during physical movement due to interference in the signals that arise from motion artefacts (MAs). In this research, a flexible reflectance multi-wavelength optoelectronic patch sensor (OEPS) has been developed to overcome the susceptibility of conventional pulse oximetry readings to MAs. The OEPS incorporates light embittered diodes as illumination sources with four different wavelengths, e.g. green, orange, red, and infrared unlike the conventional pulse oximetry devices that normally measure the skin absorption of only two wavelengths (red and infrared). The additional green and orange wavelengths were found to be distinguish to the absorption of deoxyhemoglobin (RHb) and oxyhemoglobin (HbO2). The reliability of extracting physiological parameters from the green and orange wavelengths is due to absorbed near to the surface of the skin, thereby shortening the optical path and so effectively reducing the influence of physical movements. To compensate of MAs, a three-axis accelerometer was used as a reference with help of adaptive filter to reduce MAs. The experiments were performed using 15 healthy subjects aged 20 to 30. The primary results show that there are no significant difference of heart rate and oxygen saturation measurements between commercial devices and OEPS Green (r=0.992), Orange(r=0.984), Red(r=0.952) and IR(r=0.97) and SpO2% (r = 0.982, p = 0.894)

A multiplexed electronic architecture for opto-electronic patch sensor to effectively monitor heart rate and oxygen saturation

To effectively capture human vital signs, a multi-wavelength optoelectronic patch sensor (MOEPS), together with a schematic architecture of electronics, was developed to overcome the drawbacks of present photoplethysmographic (PPG) sensors. To obtain a better performance of in vivo physiological measurement, the optimal illuminations, i.e., light emitting diodes (LEDs) in the MOEPS, whose wavelength is automatically adjusted to each specific subject, were selected to capture better PPG signals. A multiplexed electronic architecture has been well established to properly drive the MOEPS and effectively capture pulsatile waveforms at rest. The protocol was designed to investigate its performance with the participation of 11 healthy subjects aged between 18 and 30. The signals obtained from green (525nm) and orange (595nm) illuminations were used to extract heart rate (HR) and oxygen saturation (SpO2%). These results were compared with data, simultaneously acquired, from a commercial ECG and a pulse oximeter. Considering the difficulty for current devices to attain the SpO2%, a new computing method, to obtain the value of SpO2%, is proposed depended on the green and orange wavelength illuminations. The values of SpO2% between the MOEPS and the commercial Pulse Oximeter devics showed that the results were in good agreement. The values of HR showed close correlation between commercial devices and the MOEPS (HR: r1=0.994(Green); r2=0.992(Orange); r3=0.975(Red); r4=0.990(IR))

A multi-wavelength opto-electronic patch sensor to effectively detect physiological changes against human skin types

Different skin pigments among various ethnic group people have an impact on spectrometric illumination on skin surface. To effectively capture photoplethysmographic (PPG) signals, a multi-wavelength opto-electronic patch sensor (OEPS) together with a schematic architecture of electronics were developed to overcome the drawback of present PPG sensor. To perform a better in vivo physiological measurement against skin pigments, optimal illuminations in OEPS, whose wavelength is compatible with a specific skin type, were optimized to capture a reliable physiological sign of heart rate (HR). A protocol was designed to investigate an impact of five skin types in compliance with Von Luschan’s chromatic scale. Thirty-three healthy male subjects between the ages of 18 and 41 were involved in the protocol implemented by means of the OEPS system. The results show that there is no significant difference (p: 0.09, F = 3.0) in five group tests with the skin types across various activities throughout a series of consistent measurements. The outcome of the present study demonstrates that the OEPS, with its multi-wavelength illumination characteristics, could open a path in multiple applications of different ethnic groups with cost-effective health monitoring

The Association between Colorectal Cancer and Colonoscopic Conditions in Saudi Patients: A 10-Year Cross-Sectional-Retrospective Study

BACKGROUND: In Saudi Arabia, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common cancer in males and the third most common cancer in females. The current gold standard for colorectal cancer diagnosis is colonoscopy. Several concerns regarding the balance of ordering colonoscopy procedures for patients presenting with signs and symptoms. There are also several concerns regarding over-ordering the procedure when unnecessary. The current study aimed to evaluate the association between colorectal cancer and colonoscopic conditions in Saudi patients. METHODS: A 10-year cross-sectional study was conducted at Alnoor Specialty Hospital, Makkah, over the last ten years. Colonoscopy reports of patients were evaluated to identify the colonoscopy manifestations associated with mass, polyps, and bleeding. RESULTS: The current study evaluated 2158 cases admitted to the hospital for colonoscopic diagnosis. Results indicated that most of the patients were males (55.4%). Additionally, results showed a significant statistical association between tumor and bleeding, polyp, and hemorrhage. Moreover, it highlighted the association between polyps and bleeding, inflammation, and diverticulosis. CONCLUSION: CRC screening in Saudi Arabia is comprehensive; however, there are a few areas for improvement, including standardization of colorectal cancer pathology reporting to improve the health system's quality. Also, the current study identified conditions that are significantly associated with reported colon polyps and tumors, which could aid in stratifying patients selected for screening via colonoscopy

Transgenic human ES and iPS reporter cell lines for identification and selection of pluripotent stem cells in vitro

Optimization of pluripotent stem cell expansion and differentiation is facilitated by biological tools that permit non-invasive and dynamic monitoring of pluripotency, and the ability to select for an undifferentiated input cell population. Here we report on the generation and characterisation of clonal human embryonic stem (HES3, H9) and human induced pluripotent stem cell lines (UQEW01i-epifibC11) that have been stably modified with an artificial EOS(C3+) promoter driving expression of EGFP and puromycin resistance-conferring proteins. We show that EGFP expression faithfully reports on the pluripotency status of the cells in these lines and that antibiotic selection allows for an efficient elimination of differentiated cells from the cultures. We demonstrate that the extinction of the expression of the pluripotency reporter during differentiation closely correlates with the decrease in expression of conventional pluripotency markers, such as OCT4 (POU5F1), TRA-1-60 and SSEA4 when screening across conditions with various levels of pluripotency-maintaining or differentiation-inducing signals. We further illustrate the utility of these lines for real-time monitoring of pluripotency in embryoid bodies and microfluidic bioreactors. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B. V

Oxygen saturation measurements from green and orange illuminations of multi-wavelength optoelectronic patch sensors

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Photoplethysmography (PPG) based pulse oximetry devices normally use red and infrared illuminations to obtain oxygen saturation (SpO2) readings. In addition, the presence of motion artefacts severely restricts the utility of pulse oximetry physiological measurements. In the current study, a combination of green and orange illuminations from a multi-wavelength optoelectronic patch sensor (mOEPS) was investigated in order to improve robustness to subjects’ movements in the extraction of SpO2 measurement. The experimental protocol with 31 healthy subjects was divided into two sub-protocols, and was designed to determine SpO2 measurement. The datasets for the first sub-protocol were collected from 15 subjects at rest, with the subjects free to move their hands. The datasets for the second sub-protocol with 16 subjects were collected during cycling and walking exercises. The results showed good agreement with SpO2 measurements (r = 0.98) in both sub-protocols. The outcomes promise a robust and cost-effective approach of physiological monitoring with the prospect of providing health monitoring that does not restrict user physical movements