The base station - your personal health assistant

Either as a realization of a smartphone or as a personal digital assistant (PDA), the base station is representing your personal health assistant. It is the user interface, used to configure the sensors applied, analyzing and visualizing the measure vital parameters, and is able to inform the patient whenever a critical vital parameter is captured. Via a mobile communication network, the base station stays in contact with a central electronic patient database (EPA) and a medical call center. From there, the acquired signals and vital parameters can be reviewed by doctors which may also supervise the patient. If necessary, a local rescue service can be called, automatically informed about the local position of the patient.

As a result of the improvements on the microelectronic marked, hand-held devices become more and more common. Features as color displays, graphical information input, and communication interfaces are a standard configuration provided by new devices. However, to fulfill the requirements of a personal health monitoring system several adjustments concerning reliability and safety issues has to be done. Another main aspect of such a monitoring system is a simple user interface, reducing the risk of wrong handling by the patient.

Inside the PHMon project, we are evaluating the usability of several mobile platforms. Also, the design and development of several hand-held systems is tried which can be used as the base station of the personal health assistant. As a matter of fact, the performance of mobile devices will increase in the following years, combined with the reduction of unit costs. Thus, features like voice recognition and voice output are becoming feasible as input and output devices, making the handling less complicated. The ongoing miniaturization will also make it possible to integrate such systems into daily used devices, e.g., glasses or watches, or clothes.

Smart sensors - distributed information processing

The raw data captured by the sensors must be processed in order to calculate the medically relevant vital parameters. Therefore, a signal processing system with a high performance is needed. This should be directly integrated into the wearable sensors to minimize communication overhead by data reduction. A very low power consumption has to be achieved, so that a high degree of mobility can be ensured.

In our designs, a system-on-chip realization is tried. Complete micro systems are integrated on one chip, providing a high integration rate and thus making a mobil monitoring device possible.