Skip to main content

A simple patient monitoring system may be a win-win for both patient and healthcare

Published Date
Author Edmund Suckow

Portable medical electronic trends are the enabler for reduced health care costs. Non-invasive battery-powered sensors are mobile and, when coupled with on-board memory, can capture a complete data pattern for a given symptom. Due to the continuous advances in ICs, these units are getting smaller, lasting longer, and therefore are more easily deployed into the field.

After a patient leaves the hospital, it is back to life as normal. The physician recommends rest for a few days, keeping your heart rate down, take it easy, etc. All too often we find ourselves pushing the limits, be it intentional or unknowingly. On the opposite spectrum, we may be advised to get the heart rate up and pick up the pace. A simple patient monitoring system may be a win-win for both patient and healthcare, resulting in fewer hospital visits while bring more value to those visits that do occur.

Sensors were too large to be considered for 24/7 monitoring several years ago, but advances in electronics are making them smaller and last longer on a single set of batteries. Glucose monitors and injectors are just the start, having very recently reached a closed loop test and administer insulin system. These tools are worn daily by Type I diabetes patients. This concept can be implemented much further than diabetes.

It will not be long before similar systems will monitor heart rate, blood oxygen, blood pressure, and temperature all in one sensor. It could be wireless or plugged into a USB port once a day to show a complete data trend. This offers a more accurate prognosis from the doctors, having been provided much more data than the single data point collected upon hospital admittance.

Compact battery technology has remained relatively unchanged over the last five years. Extending the life of these sensors has been a direct result of power supply design discipline and IC advances. Leveraging cell phone standards, these advances include: charging over USB, high efficiency DC/DC regulators, adoption of I/O standards (I2C, SPI, SDIO, etc), and display improvements.

The key is transparency through integration. A patient is more likely to implement a prescribed micro-sized adhesive sensor if it is unobtrusive but still cool enough to synchronize with a smart phone. While recycling existing technology and standards from recent cell phone advances, portable medical electronics will advance and bring value to both patient and to the overall health care system.