E! 7911 Vital Sign Monitoring for Home Health Care

Eurostars prosjektet Vital Sign Monitoring for Home Health Care fokuserer på enkel og effektiv måling av vitale medisinske parametre gjennom bruk av trådløse multisensormoduler som bl.a. inkluderer EKG og respirasjon. Den norske sensorprodusenten Novelda har utviklet en tilpasset radarsensor som kan måle respirasjon på en enklere og mer kostnadseffektiv måte enn med eksisterende metoder. Andre revisjon av radarsensoren er nå ferdigstilt og testet med gode resultat. Sensoren er integrert med mikrokontroller og dedikert firmware optimalisert for pustdeteksjon. Endelig versjon av respirasjonssensoren er integrert med øvrige sensorer og er nå under uttesting. Foreløpige tester av systemet viser gode resultater som er sammenfallende med referanseoppsett.

In the proposed project, VitalHomeHealthCare, the goal is to develop a vital sign monitoring product adapted for home health care market. The basic version of the monitoring system should consist of a miniaturised self-contained wireless wearable sensor a nd one receiver module with capability to send vital patient signs data to a health care clinic remotely located. The miniaturised wireless sensor will be implemented as a wearable patch attached to the upper torso. The primary vitals signs implemented in this project would be - Breathing - ECG - O2 saturation - Temperature The sensor will be implemented as a patch with a target dimension of 65x65 mm and 8 mm thickness. One part of the sensor will be disposable, consisting of adhesive fabric, conductin g gel, PET-film with silver print (electrodes) and another part which will be charged and reused. The small size of sensor is possible to achieve because of recent technology breakthroughs. One of the more important technological advancements is the int roduction of UWB-radar for monitoring breathing. Breathing would with prior technology be measured by monitoring the variations in impedance either using electrodes located on either side of torso or with an elastic conducting rubber band around the torso . In contrast the UWB-radar sends out a well-defined radio energy pulse that echoes back to a receiver and the time delays are measured. This technology resembles ultrasound technique but the energy needed is much smaller compared to ultrasound and also t he electronics can be made really small as the UWB radar is implemented as single CMOS chip. The radio frequencies are Ultra Wide Band UWB from 3.1 GHz up to 10.6 GHz. The basics for UWB-radar is to send out a radio pulse and record the echoes that bounce s back when the radio wave transition a media with different dialectical properties. The lung wall is rich in blood and the lung itself is filled with air therefore will the echo from the lung wall be very distinct.