Remote physiological monitoring

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Remote monitoring of people is now a possibility due to remote wireless technology and devices getting smaller. Also the advent of "smart fabrics" in recent years has allowed people to stay attached to monitoring devices without the issues of discomfort, large bulky technology or skin break down associated with sticky patches.

The field of remote sensing a persons vital signs have come a long way in recent years. Polar from Finland has defined the consumer sports market for the last 20 years using a conductive plastic strap that communicates to a watch using an oscillating magnetic field or recently a digital radio interface. Watches or "wrist tops" by Polar and Suunto among others have been getting more and more complex in recent years with training programs and weight loss calorie counters. Actigraph, a company from Florida, USA, has pioneered the used of solid state accelerometers to measure human movement. Vivometric has found limited success with its LifeShirt concept. The Lifeshirt looks like a waist coat, connects with a cable to a PDA on the persons belt and measures heart rate, breathing rate, and movement.

Until recently there was no practical system that allowed a person to have a sensor that was comfortable, unobtrusive, cost effective and put multiple parameters together to enable automatic measuring of fitness, fatigue, distress and condition. Several systems have been developed in recent years that have made pioneering advances in terms of comfort, reliability, ease of use, and technical accuracy.

The BioHarness (Zephyr Technology) allows a user (or remote person) to view vital signs and status such as dehydration, heat stroke or trauma. Integrated in a shirt or strap it offers flexibilty and filedibility for the user. The Bluetooth radio built in allows the BioHarness to communicate with mobile phones, satellites and VHF radios for soldiers, fire fighters and police officers and also to mobile phones for local applications or internet connectivity such as remote patient monitoring by doctors. Of interest to reserachers is the 24 hour battery life and 20 days of logging. Zephyr has had development assitance with NASA, Stanford University and US Special Forces, focusing on real world deployment of systems. Thier software is built into Falcon View and medic PDA's sllowig real decision to made in the battle field or fire ground. Physioliogy in depth and software that lets a officer make a decision seems to be their focus.

The Mini Mitter Company (now Respironics/Philips) developed a system for vital signs data logging known as VitalSense^TM and released the system for commercial production in 2003. VitalSense^TM consists of a set of miniature, wireless physiological sensors associated with a personal-worn radio-frequency receiver. As of 2009, VitalSense^TM supports core body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature. Note this technology uses invasive "pills" to measure core temperature and face-masks to measure respiration. Remote physiological monitoring is defined as non invasive, i.e. people can carry out their life and job without encumberance. Note Core temperature pills reside in the lower bowl and have a dealyed temeprature responce of up to 20 minutes. "Gold Standard" core temperature measurements include arterial

Developed by Cambridgeshire based Hidalgo Ltd (part of the Jaltek Group(Indian)), Equivital is an ambulatory, wearable, high performance physiological system providing continuous real time visibility of an individual’s vital signs over a personal Bluetooth network or via a field radio system. These include heart rate, 2-lead electrocardiogram (ECG), respiration rate and effort, temperature, body position, blood oxygen saturation, impact and fall detection. Eqivatels technology is paid for by the US Government and apparently the IP is under GPR license for defense applications. Equivital^TM presents significant opportunities in enabling the wireless monitoring of physical performance and well being of personnel engaged in a range of demanding activities including military operations, emergency services provision, hazardous environment inspection and sport. Equivital^TM is also extremely effective in the remote monitoring of patient condition within hospitals and at home following their release.

Both Equivital^TM and VitalSense are US FDA registered. Equivital^TM is compliant with CE medical device standard ISO 13485-2003 in accordance with directive 93/42/EEC.

Other technologies that allow patients to be monitored include Bluetooth enabled blood pressure cuffs, SpO2, bathroom scales and glucose meters.

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