Wearable Physiological Sensor
Detecting physiological signals during military training
The military needed a way to monitor a wide variety of physiological signals with an easy-to-use device. Vivonics' disposable physiological sensor monitors EEG, ECG, and EMG with a single convenient band
Why Wireless Monitoring?
Continuous physiological monitoring can provide invaluable insight into the status of the person monitored. The right sensors can provide important information related to both the physical and mental state of the subject. Although sensing modalities and the information that can be gleaned from them is a fairly well advanced science, the sensors themselves lag behind in terms of being sufficiently unobtrusive and wearable.
The potential of tattoo-like electronics is very appealing, however the tradeoff remains for the foreseeable future that the surface area of these solutions is necessarily several orders of magnitude greater than that possible with dedicated ICs for them to begin to approach the functionality of an Integrated Circuit (IC)-based solution. A near-term solution to truly wearable physiologic monitoring is possible by combining known engineering solutions in a novel way. These techniques include creating
• dedicated ICs • flexible substrate for mounting on skin
• thin flexible antennas • power scavenging from environment
Our Solution
Our unique combination of miniaturized circuitry, wireless data transmission, and power harvesting makes our solution ideal for continuous monitoring in hospitals, at-home, and in-field environments. Information from a single sensor can be used, combined with our algorithms that glean important whole-body physiological information from a single data stream. Data from multiple sensors can be integrated to further enhance the understanding of whole body physiology.
Our system is smaller and more comfortable to wear than other sensors on the market, and our algorithms provide greater physiological information than those used with currently available sensor systems.
Disclaimer: This material is based upon work supported by the Office of Naval Research under Contract No. N68335-16-C-0117. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.
(Award N68335-16-C-0117 is titled: MICROS - Miniature Integrated Circuits Reporting Overall Status)
Status
*Product under development, not yet FDA approved
Initial prototypes have been tested; miniaturization underway