A Sensing Chair design for home based physiological signs monitoring

The current work aims to construct a reliable system for health status monitoring, in particular for old people and chronic cardiovascular patients away from clinical professionals. We developed an adaptive home-based platform that integrates multifarious sensors and telecommunication services to cover the needs of both users and healthcare professionals. For home use, sensors and measuring apparatus are embedded in a chair, which is named as Sensing Chair. It is able to acquire vital signals from human bodies, while users sit in the chair, free from being constrained by electrodes. The possible obtained signs are electrocardiogram, body weight and pulse wave etc.. The complete system also includes a wireless gateway for signal collection/transmission and a server that integrates database, web interface and decision support system.