Wearable medical devices for tele-home healthcare

The world´s ageing population and prevalence of chronic diseases have lead to high demand for tele-home healthcare, in which vital-signs monitoring is essential. An overview of state-of-art wearable technologies for remote patient-monitoring is presented, followed by case studies on a cuffless blood pressure meter, ring-type heart rate monitor, and Bluetooth™-based ECG monitor. Aim of our project is to develop a tele-home healthcare system which utilizes wearable devices, wireless communication technologies, and multisensor data fusion methods. As an important part of this system, a cuffless BP meter has been developed and tested on 30 subjects in a total of 71 trials over a period of five months. Preliminary results show a mean error (ME) of 1.82 mmHg and standard deviation of error (SDE) of 7.62 mmHg in systolic pressure; while ME and SDE in diastolic pressure are 0.45 mmHg and 5.27 mmHg, respectively.