Construction of healthcare network based on proposed ECG and physical-activity sensor adopting energy-harvesting technologies

Recently, ubiquitous vital signs sensing using wireless medical sensors has become essential, not only for inhospital diagnosis but for healthcare at home. In this work, the most advanced electrocardiography (ECG) sensor is proposed. This sensor system makes it possible to eliminate the use of both batteries and self-adhesive electrodes by introducing energy harvesting technology and newly developed unwoven fabric electrodes, respectively. By realizing smaller and thinner implementation and easy handling, the complete sensors may be easily mounted on underwear and allow long term wearable usage for vital signs monitoring. The sensor has the capability of transmitting ECG data to a cloud-based data processing server set up in the Internet via a smartphone or other ubiquitous tools. This paper describes the configuration of the ECG sensor, which adopts cutting edge technologies, and also the constitution of the acquired ECG data transmitting and processing systems.