Taking Care of Mobile Patients

Roland Piquepaille writes "After a patient has been hospitalized for a surgical intervention, he usually wants to return to his normal life. But doctors would like to monitor him to be sure that the operation was successful. How can they manage this without being too intrusive? In "Health Care Monitoring of Mobile Patients," Italian researchers offer a three-layer networking solution. First, a body area sensor network would continuously record your cardiac activity or your body temperature. A second level would involve a home sensor network, including for example a PC wirelessly receiving this information. Finally, this home network would be able to alert an hospital network if needed. Right now, this whole idea is at the proof-of-concept level, but it really looks promising."

Comments

Re:Exactly What We Don't Need

[Tsu Dho Nimh]

"more high tech flim-flammery for diseases that should have been prevented"

Where did they mention "diseases that should have been prevented"? They could be talking about surgery for broken bones, gall stones, appendectomies, or whatever ... you leapt to the conclusion that it would be a "lifestyle" disease.

It's been done. Devices are on patients now.

[LordByronStyrofoam]

Cardionet makes an ambulatory cardiac patient monitor with a chest-worn sensor that transmits heartbeat waveform data to a belt-worn unit over ISM band (range is actually up to 30 feet - useful for when the belt-worn unit is in it's recharger on the nightstand and the patient gets up to use the restroom down the hall).
The belt-worn unit, running VxWorks, continuously analyzes the waveform, comparing results with physician-defined thresholds. When a threshold is exceeded the unit communicates with the monitoring center using it's built-in cell phone. It the patient is outside, the built-in GPS tells the ambulance where to find him/her. The monitoring center can contact the physician. The system is in active use today in Philadelphia.

Bad idea from experience

[kbielefe]

My daughter was born last June 3 months premature, spent 3 months in the hospital, and then 4 months on a home heart/apnea monitor because complications with her hydrocephalus cause bradycardia (low heart rate).

I think wireless transmission to the hospital would be a bad idea for the following reasons:

• If you are bad enough off to need a monitor you need someone at your home trained in CPR and the interpretation of the monitor alarms anyway in order to respond fast enough.
• Those things go crazy with false alarms. Our daughter had about 300 alarms a month, only a couple of which were actually cause for concern, and none of which required medical intervention. Every time our daughter breathed a little shallow when she was eating, wiggled a little too much, or got a little upset when her diaper was changed, the alarm went off. A human must look at the person to verify if the alarm is valid, even in the hospital. It was pretty fun to have the battery get low after a 4 hour plane flight and set off the ear-piercing alarm in the terminal.

Now a real innovation would be making these the size of a cell phone instead of that VCR we were hauling around.