Remote monitoring of people is now a possibility due to remote wireless technology and miniaturization. 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.
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The field of remote sensing a person's vital signs have come a long way in recent years. Polar Electro of Finland has, for the last 20 years, produced 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 complex in recent years with training programs and weight loss calorie counters. Actigraph, an American company from Florida, has pioneered the use of solid state accelerometers to measure human movement. Remote sensing waist coats, which connect with a cable to a PDA measure 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 LifeShirt by VivoMetrics was the first commercially available smartshirt for remote patient monitoring and recorded ECG, respiration using inductance plethysmography, accelerometry, with optional plugin pulse oximetry, GSR, blood pressure, microphone and electronic diary capture.
The seamless HealthVest (SmartLife Technology) for remote health monitoring uses integrated and integral softsensors to detect changes to the wearer's vital signs in real time. The garments are super comfortable to wear and enable monitoring of ECG, Respiration, Temperature, Heartrate in both strenuous and resting states. The HealthVest allows real time remote monitoring in healthcare, sports, hazardous environments and military applications.
The BioHarness Zephyr Technology allows a remote operator to view vital signs and status such as if someone has fallen over. The Bluetooth radio built in allows the device to communicate with VHF radios for soldiers, police officers or firefighters, to mobile phones for local applications or allows internet connectivity for remote patient monitoring by doctors.
Respironics developed a system for vital sign data logging and released the system for commercial production in 2003. It consists of a set of miniature, wireless physiological sensors associated with a personal-worn radio-frequency receiver. As of 2009, it supports core body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate and skin temperature.
Equivital is a proprietary remote physiological monitoring system developed by Hidalgo Limited, a Cambridge, UK based biomedical company. It 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, skin temperature (multiple locations), core body temperature (ingestible capsule), body orientation, blood oxygen saturation, impact and fall detection. It is used widely by research institutes and universities studying human performance and sports science as well as having applications in military, CBRN, fire fighter, lone worker and telemedicine.
The BioCapture physiological monitoring system by Cleveland Medical is a wireless, handheld or hip-worn device that can monitor a large variety of configurable physiological signals including ECG, EEG, EOG and EMG, respiration, spirometry, oximetry and more. This physiological monitoring system is used in cardiopulmonary research, neuromonitoring research, EMG testing and other clinical research, as well as sports and psychophysiological applications.
Other technologies that allow patients to be monitored include Bluetooth enabled blood pressure cuffs, bathroom scales and glucose meters.
Technological advances in electronics, smart fabrics and wireless communications have led to increasing developments in remote physiological sensing hardware. These sensor platforms all measure raw physiological signal data from the body, however, for this to be of value it is necessary to convert these waveforms into meaningful and contextual information. Several of these devices provide real-time, on-board derivations of basic parameters such as heart rate and respiration rate. However, a wealth of additional, more detailed information is possible when measuring multiple, time synchronized data channels during non-laboratory, daily living conditions.
The research community is using these sensors to develop new applications that further advance the uses of the technology. Specialized offline software analysis platforms that aid the visualization, management and analysis of multiple, synchronized data channels are available to assist researchers with the development of new applications. These software platforms have tools specifically designed for the exploration of remotely acquired data sets and include features such as artifact management tools and derivations of a wide variety of meaningful endpoints that can be applied over multiple research contexts. The use of these sensors in applications such as disease management and performance monitoring is nascent but there is a still a strong need for more sophisticated endpoints and meaningful algorithms that extend well beyond basic heart and respiration rate monitoring.