Breathing pattern parameters refer to the characteristic pattern parameters of respiratory movements, including the breathing amplitude and cycle, chest and abdomen contribution, coordination, etc. It is of great importance to analyze the breathing pattern parameters quantificationally when exploring the pathophysiological variations of breathing and providing instructions on pulmonary rehabilitation training. Our study provided detailed method to quantify breathing pattern parameters including respiratory rate, inspiratory time, expiratory time, inspiratory time proportion, tidal volume, chest respiratory contribution ratio, thoracoabdominal phase difference and peak inspiratory flow. We also brought in “respiratory signal quality index” to deal with the quality evaluation and quantification analysis of long-term thoracic-abdominal respiratory movement signal recorded, and proposed the way of analyzing the variance of breathing pattern parameters. On this basis, we collected chest and abdomen respiratory movement signals in 23 chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients and 22 normal pulmonary function subjects under spontaneous state in a 15 minute-interval using portable cardio-pulmonary monitoring system. We then quantified subjects’ breathing pattern parameters and variability. The results showed great difference between the COPD patients and the controls in terms of respiratory rate, inspiratory time, expiratory time, thoracoabdominal phase difference and peak inspiratory flow. COPD patients also showed greater variance of breathing pattern parameters than the controls, and unsynchronized thoracic-abdominal movements were even observed among several patients. Therefore, the quantification and analyzing method of breathing pattern parameters based on the portable cardiopulmonary parameters monitoring system might assist the diagnosis and assessment of respiratory system diseases and hopefully provide new parameters and indexes for monitoring the physical status of patients with cardiopulmonary disease.
According to the development status of wearable technology and the demand of intelligent health monitoring, we studied the multi-function integrated smart watches solution and its key technology. First of all, the sensor technology with high integration density, Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and mobile communication technology were integrated and used in develop practice. Secondly, for the hardware design of the system in this paper, we chose the scheme with high integration density and cost-effective computer modules and chips. Thirdly, we used real-time operating system FreeRTOS to develop the friendly graphical interface interacting with touch screen. At last, the high-performance application software which connected with BLE hardware wirelessly and synchronized data was developed based on android system. The function of this system included real-time calendar clock, telephone message, address book management, step-counting, heart rate and sleep quality monitoring and so on. Experiments showed that the collecting data accuracy of various sensors, system data transmission capacity, the overall power consumption satisfy the production standard. Moreover, the system run stably with low power consumption, which could realize intelligent health monitoring effectively.
Cardiovascular disease has caused a huge burden of disease worldwide, and the rapid advancement of smart wearable devices has provided new means for early diagnosis, real-time monitoring, and event prevention of cardiovascular disease. Smart wearable devices can be classified into various categories based on detection signals and physical carrier types. Based on an overview of the composition of such devices, this article further introduces the current cutting-edge research and related market products related to smart blood pressure monitoring, electrocardiogram monitoring, and ultrasound monitoring. It also discusses the future development and challenges of such devices, aiming to provide evidence support for the research and development of smart wearable devices in the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular diseases in the future.
Wearable devices, as an important component of digital health, are gradually penetrating into the clinical nursing field. This paper explores the current applications of wearable devices in the field of clinical nursing, with a focus on their significant roles in real-time monitoring of physiological parameters, disease management, functional rehabilitation exercises. Additionally, it analyzes the challenges these devices face, such as the need for standardized development, data security and privacy protection, and cost-benefit analysis. This paper also proposes measures to address these challenges, including enhancing policy formulation, promoting standardization, and fostering technological innovation, with the aim of providing valuable insights for the advancement of high-quality clinical nursing practices.
As a novel technology, wearable physiological parameter monitoring technology represents the future of monitoring technology. However, there are still many problems in the application of this kind of technology. In this paper, a pilot study was conducted to evaluate the quality of electrocardiogram (ECG) signals of the wearable physiological monitoring system (SensEcho-5B). Firstly, an evaluation algorithm of ECG signal quality was developed based on template matching method, which was used for automatic and quantitative evaluation of ECG signals. The algorithm performance was tested on a randomly selected 100 h dataset of ECG signals from 100 subjects (15 healthy subjects and 85 patients with cardiovascular diseases). On this basis, 24-hour ECG data of 30 subjects (7 healthy subjects and 23 patients with cardiovascular diseases) were collected synchronously by SensEcho-5B and ECG Holter. The evaluation algorithm was used to evaluate the quality of ECG signals recorded synchronously by the two systems. Algorithm validation results: sensitivity was 100%, specificity was 99.51%, and accuracy was 99.99%. Results of controlled test of 30 subjects: the median (Q1, Q3) of ECG signal detected by SensEcho-5B with poor signal quality time was 8.93 (0.84, 32.53) minutes, and the median (Q1, Q3) of ECG signal detected by Holter with poor signal quality time was 14.75 (4.39, 35.98) minutes (Rank sum test, P=0.133). The results show that the ECG signal quality algorithm proposed in this paper can effectively evaluate the ECG signal quality of the wearable physiological monitoring system. Compared with signal measured by Holter, the ECG signal measured by SensEcho-5B has the same ECG signal quality. Follow-up studies will further collect physiological data of large samples in real clinical environment, analyze and evaluate the quality of ECG signals, so as to continuously optimize the performance of the monitoring system.
Smart wearable devices play an increasingly important role in physiological monitoring and disease prevention because they are portable, real-time, dynamic and continuous.The popularization of smart wearable devices among people under high-altitude environment would be beneficial for the prevention for heart and brain diseases related to high altitude. The current review comprehensively elucidates the effects of high-altitude environment on the heart and brain of different population and experimental subjects, the characteristics and applications of different types of wearable devices, and the limitations and challenges for their application. By emphasizing their application values, this review provides practical reference information for the prevention of high-altitude disease and the protection of life and health.
Objective To investigate the awareness and clinical needs of wearable artificial kidney among maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients, and to analyze the related influencing factors. Methods MHD patients were recruited from 2 tertiary hospitals in Sichuan province between April and June 2021. The convenient sampling method was used to select patients. The factors influencing the awareness and demand of MHD patients for wearable artificial kidney were analyzed. Results A total of 119 MHD patients were included. The awareness of wearable artificial kidney among the patients was mainly “never heard” (61 cases) and “heard” (58 cases). Most MHD patients (60 cases) were willing to use and participate in clinical trials in the future. The results of logistic regression indicated that the cost on household economy and treatment effect on life quality were the influencing factors for MHD patients’ awareness of wearable artificial kidney (P＜0.05). The average duration of single dialysis and the impact of treatment on working or studying were the influencing factors for MHD patients’ needs of wearable artificial kidney (P＜0.05). Conclusions The awareness of wearable artificial kidney is low among MHD patients. However, most MHD patients showed great interest in the wearable artificial kidney after preliminary understanding, suggesting that the future clinical application of wearable artificial kidney has great demand.
In order to improve the accuracy of blood pressure measurement in wearable devices, this paper presents a method for detecting blood pressure based on multiple parameters of pulse wave. Based on regression analysis between blood pressure and the characteristic parameters of pulse wave, such as the pulse wave transit time (PWTT), cardiac output, coefficient of pulse wave, the average slope of the ascending branch, heart rate, etc. we established a model to calculate blood pressure. For overcoming the application deficiencies caused by measuring ECG in wearable device, such as replacing electrodes and ECG lead sets which are not convenient, we calculated the PWTT with heart sound as reference (PWTTPCG). We experimentally verified the detection of blood pressure based on PWTTPCG and based on multiple parameters of pulse wave. The experiment results showed that it was feasible to calculate the PWTT from PWTTPCG. The mean measurement error of the systolic and diastolic blood pressure calculated by the model based on multiple parameters of pulse wave is 1.62 mm Hg and 1.12 mm Hg, increased by 57% and 53% compared to those of the model based on simple parameter. This method has more measurement accuracy.
The aging population and the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases in the elderly have brought a significant economic burden to families and society. The non-invasive wearable sensing system can continuously and real-time monitor important physiological signs of the human body and evaluate health status. In addition, it can provide efficient and convenient information feedback, thereby reducing the health risks caused by chronic diseases in the elderly. A wearable system for detecting physiological and behavioral signals was developed in this study. We explored the design of flexible wearable sensing technology and its application in sensing systems. The wearable system included smart hats, smart clothes, smart gloves, and smart insoles, achieving long-term continuous monitoring of physiological and motion signals. The performance of the system was verified, and the new sensing system was compared with commercial equipment. The evaluation results demonstrated that the proposed system presented a comparable performance with the existing system. In summary, the proposed flexible sensor system provides an accurate, detachable, expandable, user-friendly and comfortable solution for physiological and motion signal monitoring. It is expected to be used in remote healthcare monitoring and provide personalized information monitoring, disease prediction, and diagnosis for doctors/patients.
To achieve continuously physiological monitoring on hospital inpatients, a ubiquitous and wearable physiological monitoring system SensEcho was developed. The whole system consists of three parts: a wearable physiological monitoring unit, a wireless network and communication unit and a central monitoring system. The wearable physiological monitoring unit is an elastic shirt with respiratory inductive plethysmography sensor and textile electrocardiogram (ECG) electrodes embedded in, to collect physiological signals of ECG, respiration and posture/activity continuously and ubiquitously. The wireless network and communication unit is based on WiFi networking technology to transmit data from each physiological monitoring unit to the central monitoring system. A protocol of multiple data re-transmission and data integrity verification was implemented to reduce packet dropouts during the wireless communication. The central monitoring system displays data collected by the wearable system from each inpatient and monitors the status of each patient. An architecture of data server and algorithm server was established, supporting further data mining and analysis for big medical data. The performance of the whole system was validated. Three kinds of tests were conducted: validation of physiological monitoring algorithms, reliability of the monitoring system on volunteers, and reliability of data transmission. The results show that the whole system can achieve good performance in both physiological monitoring and wireless data transmission. The application of this system in clinical settings has the potential to establish a new model for individualized hospital inpatients monitoring, and provide more precision medicine to the patients with information derived from the continuously collected physiological parameters.