Unobtrusive, Low-Cost Out-of-Hospital, and In-Hospital Measurement and Monitoring System

Abstract

Continuous monitoring of vital signs can be a life-saving matter for different patient groups. The development is going toward more intelligent and unobtrusive systems to improve the usability of body-worn monitoring devices. Body-worn devices can be skin-conformable, patch-type monitoring systems that are comfortable to use even for prolonged periods of time. Herein, an intelligent and wearable, out-of-hospital, and in-hospital four-electrode electrocardiography (ECG) and respiration measurement and monitoring system is proposed. The system consists of a conformable screen-printed disposable patch, a measurement unit, gateway unit, and cloud-based analysis tools with reconfigurable signal processing pipelines. The performance of the ECG patch and the measurement unit was tested with cardiac patients and compared with a Holter monitoring device and discrete, single-site electrodes.