Categories
Sleep Wearables

Ring monitors vitals 24/7, makes sleep improving suggestions

Oura ring is a crowdfunded wearable that monitors heart rate, respiration, temperature, and movement, including time spent sitting.   The ceramic ring uses Bluetooth to share data with the accompanying app, which makes activity suggestions to improve sleep.  It also provides a “readiness score,” which the company claims alerts a user of his/her peak physical and mental performance times. Oura’s battery lasts for three days, and is charged in its ring box.

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Categories
Conference Wearables

Smart airline uniforms improve passenger safety

easyJet has partnered with CuteCircuit to create sensor embedded crew uniforms to improve passenger safety.

Cabin crew uniforms have shoulder LEDs and illuminated hems to provide lighting. Lapel LEDs display fight numbers, and microphones  in the fabric enable immediate communication.

Engineers’ uniforms have LEDs in  jacket hoods to illuminate work areas, and built in cameras to share photos for assistance.  Integrated air quality sensors and barometers notify workers of environmental issues, and create a city-by-city air quality map for passengers.

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Categories
Brain Cancer Ultrasound

Ultrasound penetrates blood-brain barrier to treat brain tumor

Todd Mainprize at Sunnybrook Hospital has, for the first time,  delivered chemotherapy directly to a brain tumor, by breaking through the blood-brain barrier using tightly focused ultrasound.

The patient’s bloodstream was  infused with a chemotherapy drug, as well as microscopic bubbles, which are smaller than red blood cells and can pass freely through blood. MRI-guided, low intensity sound waves targeted blood vessels in the blood-brain barrier, near the tumor site. The ultrasound waves vibrated the microbubbles,  loosening the tight cell junctions of the blood-brain barrier. The loosened junctions allowed the chemotherapy drug to flow past the barrier and deposit within the targeted tumor site.

This breakthrough could also lead to new treatments for brain diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

Click to view Sunnybrook Hospital video.

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Categories
Heart Wearables

Chip uses ECG to monitor heart, improving wearable accuracy

Samsung’s  Bio Processor uses ECG  to continuously measure the electric activity of the heart, improving its accuracy.  It must be worn on the skin near the heart, and includes built-in flash memory and Bluetooth for connecting to one’s phone.  The chip can also monitor PPG, ECG, skin temperature, GSR and body fat. The company describes this as a breakthrough in wearable accuracy.  While not yet available to consumers, it will be used in wearables for health, fitness, or biometric identification purposes.

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Categories
Brain Parkinson's Wounds

Wearable + exercise app to improve Parkinson’s symptoms

MIO and Beneufit have partnered to develop wearables to target the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.

The pdFIT exercise app was developed to improve manual dexterity and fitness levels in Parkinson’s patients.  The wearable continuously monitors progress via sensors on the wrist.

The company claims that its Optimal Heart Rate  technology cancels noise caused by movement, due to an added accelerometer.  This improves the accuracy of the heart rate monitoring algorithm.

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Categories
BCI Brain

Faster, noninvasive BCI speller system

Tsinghua University researchers have developed  a noninvasive brain-computer interface with the fastest information transfer rate to date.   The system is based on  steady-state visual evoked potentials, where a speller system detects a user’s gaze direction to a target a character.

Frequency and phase of stimulation signals were precisely encoded in single-trial SSVEPs. A user-specific decoding algorithm adjusted to individual differences in visual latency. Interference from noisy EEG signals was addressed with a visual latency estimation approach.

In online spelling performance among subjects, the mean spelling rate was 50 to 60 characters per minute, with an information transfer rate of 4.5 to 5.5 bits per second.  This is much faster than existing noninvasive BCI spelling systems.

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Categories
Pain Wearables

Wearable monitors physiological signs of pain

When we experience pain in a clinical setting, we are asked to rate it on a scale of 1-10, which guides our treatment plan.  This method is obviously imprecise, but also irrelevant if a patient cannot communicate or is under anesthesia.

Medasense is developing a finger mounted wearable with a sensor that records physiological signs of pain.  The measurements are derived from the nonlinear composite of heart rate, heart rate variability, amplitude of the photoplethysmogram, skin conductance, fluctuations in skin conductance, and their time derivatives.  Algorithms convert the data into a real-time, continuous index on a bedside monitor.  The system is meant to be used both in the hospital and at home.

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Categories
Pregnancy Wearables

Wireless monitor tracks contractions, fetal heart rate

TrueLabor is a wireless monitor that measures uterine contractions and fetal heart rate throughout all stages of pregnancy and labor.  It’s creator, OB-Tools, claims that it can distinguish between true and false contractions, and is not affected by movement.

A uterine monitor measures electrical activity via surface  EMG electrodes attached to the abdomen.  An algorithm generates a wave pattern that graphically demonstrates the presence, frequency, and intensity of contractions, while filtering excess noise.

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PREFERRED REGISTRATION RATE AVAILABLE THROUGH 11/30/15

Categories
Assistive Technologies Ears Eyes Virtual Reality

AR + Kinect games assist the hearing, visually impaired

Reflex Arc‘s  augmented reality games  work with  Microsoft Kinect to help children learn sign language and assist the visually impaired with exercise.   Boris gestures sign language, and  The Nepalese Necklace helps those with no limited sight  with mobility training.

The games encourage exercise and  are designed to help blind children learn about  spatial awareness, balance, coordination, and orientation.

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PREFERRED REGISTRATION RATES AVAILABLE THROUGH 11/30/15.

Categories
Respiratory

Phone sensor detects asthma attacks, triggers

Wing by Sparo Labs is a crowdfunded smartphone attachment that detects early signs of asthma attacks.

Its sensor works with a companion app to measure FEV1 (how much air one can exhale in one second) and Peak Flow (how fast one can exhale).

The company claims that data it collects over time by can allow users to visualize lung function and detect environmental and medication triggers.  In addition to asthma, they believe it could be used to monitor and manage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, cystic fibrosis, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, and pulmonary fibrosis.
Categories
Wearables

Continuous blood flow measuring wearable

John Rogers, Richard Chad Webb, and colleagues at the University of Illinois have built a flexible (epidermal electronics based) monitor that measures blood flow in the outermost 2 millimeters of skin. Blood flow measuring devices typically use optical imaging, which requires patients to not move.  This technology can be used in a wearable that obtains measurements during motion.

The thin, light device sits on top of the skin, without distorting the blood flow it seeks to measure. It detects differences in heat patterns. Computer algorithms interpret the heat pattern differences as blood flow rate.

The device was  placed above the wrist veins of human volunteers. Blood flow measurements were taken as the subjects stood motionless for 5 minutes; as they stepped up and down on a machine for 3 minutes; and as they lied on their backs. Researchers  compared the results with those of optical imagers to ensure accuracy.

To be used in practice, a self contained power source, and components that allow the data to be wirelessly transmitted, must still be developed.

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REGISTER BY NOVEMBER 30TH TO RECEIVE THE PREFERRED RATE.

Categories
Eyes Wearables

Wearable + navigation service for the visually impaired

Aira.IO combines wearable tech with a remote agent service to guide the visually impaired.  Users are connected with agents who interpret the data stream from smart glasses and assist with navigation. The device uses a routing algorithm based on user and agent preferences.

The company completed  a multi-phase beta trial with 100 blind and low-vision participants in simulated and real-life settings. Users wore Google Glass and were assisted by agents via Aira’s dashboard platform during several activities: navigating city streets and intersections; being in a hotel; locating and identifying canned goods in a kitchen; selecting clothing in a simulated department store; shopping at a supermarket; ordering at a coffee shop; and traveling by foot and public transportation.

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