A Modular Point-of-Care Platform for Real-Time Monitoring and Transmission of Physiological Signals

Abstract

Present trends of increasing health care costs, demand novel methods and tools for a transformation from a reactive and hospital-driven to a proactive, patient-centered and enabling healthcare. This work presents a modular wireless healthcare platform, that can be customized to meet different clinical and patient needs. It offers multiple sensing modalities to acquire a variety of physiological signals including bio-potentials, thoracic impedance, activity and posture, blood pressure, pulse wave form and blood oxygen saturation. A customized firmware allows for real-time digital signal processing to extract features, immediate alarm, feedback, and/or interface to therapeutic devices and procedures. The integration of our platform into mobile device technologies provides control and visualization of patient health data during treatment. Thus, patients can become actively engaged in their health and take responsibility leading to a potentially higher adherence to the treatment plan and early diagnosis. Real-time monitoring and immediate data transfer to a secured cloud based database provides decision support for physicians and caregivers and enables data mining to identify early markers for timely intervention in order to reduce costly hospital stays or re-admissions.