Category: Sleep
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Contactless sleep and fatigue sensor
Entering the digital health market, Nintendo is developing a contactless device to track a user’s sleep and monitor fatigue. It is based on a non-contact radio frequency sensor which measures breathing, heartbeat and body movement. The company describes the system as five “Non” Sensing elements: 1. “Non-wearable.” Nothing is attached to the body. 2. “Non-contact.” The product…
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Biometric shirt monitors astronaut vital signs
Astroskin is a prototype medical monitoring shirt and headband for astronauts that could be used to continuously monitor patients. Its sensors record and analyze the wearer’s vital signs, sleep quality and activity level. Data is relayed to medical teams on the ground to monitor a crew member’s health, behavior and performance during daily operations and…
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Wearables become beautiful (just in time for Mother’s Day)
The Misfit Bloom is a stylish pendant with the same health sensing technology as a fitness band. A Shine sensor, originally crowdfunded on Indiegogo, is seamlessly integrated into the necklace, providing continuous monitoring of a user’s steps, calories and sleep. As health monitoring becomes ubiquitous, ApplySci believes that the number of fashion forward wearable devices will steadily…
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Update: Samsung increases health applications with Gear 2 watch, Gear Fit, Galaxy S5
Samsung has updated its devices as it tries to establish dominance in the health and fitness tracking market. Its Gear 2 watch is now based on Samsung’s Tizen operating system rather than Android. It includes an accelerometer and gyroscope – capable of acting as a pedometer and an optical heart rate monitor. This allows the watch…
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Nerve stimulation for sleep apnea
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1308659 Current sleep apnea treatments are intrusive and uncomfortable. University of Pittsburgh Professor Patrick J. Strollo has developed a “pulse generator” which, when surgically implanted, senses one’s effort to breath. It then sends pulse stimulation to the hypoglossal nerve, controlling the neck muscles that keep the airway open, preventing collapse. Standard treatment for sleep apnea is…
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Baby onesie tracks breathing, sleep, movement, temperature
http://mimobaby.com/ Sensor based baby monitoring is receiving a lot of exposure at CES. One such monitor, by Mimo baby, includes three parts: the Kimono, the Turtle and the Lilypad station. The Kimono is a cotton onesie, with machine washable sensors, worn by a baby when sleeping. It houses the Turtle, which tracks a baby’s respiration,…
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Crowdfunded “smart sock” monitors baby’s breathing
http://www.owletcare.com Owlet Baby Monitors has created a baby “smart sock” with sensors that transmit a child’s heart rate, oxygen levels, skin temperature, sleep quality, and sleep position (rollover alerts) to a parent’s smartphone. The company has launched a crowdfunding campaign as it goes through the FDA approval process.
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Home medical device data uploaded to EHRs; patient participation encourages behavior modification
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/07/28/century-house-call/tdupWvOQI6b3dKdKcEgdGM/story.html Boston’s Partners HealthCare has launched a system that allows patients to upload information from their medical devices directly to their electronic records in doctors’ offices. Patients can regularly use glucometers, blood pressure cuffs, bathroom scales, and pulse oximeters at home, and send the data to their doctors. Doctors are also becoming increasingly interested in…
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Sensor and smartphone based baby monitor
http://medcitynews.com/2013/06/sensors-and-smartphones-bring-the-baby-monitor-into-2013/ Sensible Baby’s “Smart One” is a small, round sensor worn inside a newborn’s onesie. It constantly measures a baby’s temperature, position and chest movement, and sends the data to a smartphone app once per second. Parents can program their app to set off an alert when the baby isn’t moving, reaches a temperature above a…
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Mobile phone microphones as health sensors
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21578518-sensor-technology-microphones-are-designed-capture-sound-they-turn-out The Economist’s Technology Quarterly describes how mobile phone microphones are being used as versatile sensors with myriad health applications. Examples follow: 1. Professor Tanzeem Choudhury of Cornell has created StressSense to capture and analyze voice characteristics such as amplitude and frequency. Her team concluded that “it is feasible to implement a computationally demanding stress-classification system…
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Study shows babies, children and adults learn in their sleep
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/02/130226081155.htm Sleep helps us to learn. It may just be too hard for a brain to take in the flood of new experiences and make sense of them at the same time. Instead, our brains look at the world for a while and then shut out new input and sort through what they have seen.…
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A move toward aggregating health data from various devices and apps
http://gigaom.com/2013/03/15/tictrac-emerges-to-help-make-health-tracking-more-mainstream/ It seems that every day a new app or device promising the ultimate in health or fitness monitoring enters the market. A startup has created a personal analytics dashboard which gives people a big picture view of their own aggregated data and underlying patterns, helping them make sense of the numbers.