Health monitoring

Inventors

Chefles, Anthony • Morrison, Rory • Weir, Rebecca • Errey, Keith

Assignees

Isansys Lifecare Ltd

Abstract

Health monitoring devices allow for monitoring of the vital signs of a subject. Wireless devices can enable a subject's cardiac and/or respiratory functions to be monitored remotely, e.g. without the subject being attached to bedside equipment. A cardiac monitoring device may include a substrate, electrodes for measuring ECG signals, and an electronics module including a data processor and a wireless transmitter. The electronics module is sealed within the substrate and arranged to receive the measured ECG signals. Each ECG signal associated with a heartbeat is processed in the data processor to provide key data relating to that heartbeat. The key data may include the temporal position of a characteristic feature in the ECG signal. The key data is provided to the wireless transmitter for transmission.

Core Innovation

The invention relates to a wearable cardiac monitoring device configured to transmit to a remote receiver. The device includes a substrate, at least two electrodes for measuring ECG signals, a sealed data processing arrangement within the substrate, and a wireless transceiver. The sealed data processing arrangement receives the measured ECG signals, obtains sampled signal data by sampling each ECG signal associated with a heartbeat, and processes the sampled signal data in a data processor to extract first key data relating to that heartbeat.

The key processing applies a time window to the sampled signal data to isolate at least a portion of the data associated with a given heartbeat, and measures amplitude changes in that window. The amplitude changes are used to identify the first key data, where the first key data comprises a time stamp of an R-peak in a QRS complex and at least one further time or amplitude value corresponding to one or more pre-defined features of the ECG signal. The one or more pre-defined features are chosen from R-S amplitude, temporal position of a P-wave, amplitude of a P-wave, amplitude variations in a P-wave, temporal position of a T-wave, amplitude of a T-wave, amplitude of an S-T segment, and temporal extent of a Q-T interval.

After the first key data has been transmitted, the wireless transceiver receives an instruction to re-program the data processor. The instruction is implemented to re-program the data processor so that it uses the amplitude changes to identify second key data different from the first key data by changing the one or more pre-defined features to one or more different pre-defined features of interest for a particular subject being monitored. The second key data comprises the time stamp of the R-peak and at least one different further time or amplitude value corresponding to the different pre-defined features, and the wireless transceiver transmits the second key data instead of the first key data after re-programming.

Claims Coverage

The partial content provided includes one independent claim. It covers a wearable, sealed, wireless cardiac monitoring unit that extracts and transmits heartbeat key data from ECG signals using windowed amplitude-change processing, and supports wireless re-programming to change which ECG pre-defined features are extracted.

Across the independent claim, claim coverage centers on extracting ECG heartbeat key data by applying a time window and measuring amplitude changes to identify an R-peak timestamp and additional pre-defined ECG feature values, then using wireless instruction-based re-programming to change which pre-defined features are extracted for a particular subject and to transmit updated second key data.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications

No documented applications found