Wireless Medical Monitoring Device

• US 20080194925A1
• Filed: 04/28/2006
• Published: 08/14/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Inventors: Alsafadi, Yasser, Ali, Walid S. I.
• Granted Patent: US 8,979,756 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/301
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0002 Remote monitoring of patients using telemetry, e.g. transmission of vital signals via a communication network A61B5/07 takes precedence; transmission systems for measured values G08C; transmission H04B; transmission of digital information H04L; wireless communication networks H04W
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0024 for multiple sensor units attached to the patient, e.g. using a body or personal area network
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0028 Body tissue as transmission medium, i.e. transmission systems where the medium is the human body
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/411 Detecting or monitoring allergy or intolerance reactions to an allergenic agent or substance
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7264 Classification of physiological signals or data, e.g. using neural networks, statistical classifiers, expert systems or fuzzy systems neural networks per se G06N3/00; expert systems per se G06N5/00
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 13/005 Transmission systems in which the medium consists of the human body

Abstract

Described herein is a patient monitoring system that includes a body network (16) with at least one sensor (12) that senses physiological information about a patient and a cognitive device (2) for communicating the physiological information to a remote location. The cognitive device includes a cognitive radio (4), a cognitive monitor (10), and a transmitter (8). The cognitive radio (4) checks detected frequency spectra (6) for unused bandwidth and recommends one or more bands on which to transmit clinically relevant information received from the body network (16) to the remote location; the cognitive monitor (10) receives the information from the body network (16), prioritizes the information based at least in part on a set of rules (30), and selects which information to transmit based on the prioritization and the recommended transmission bands; and the transmitter (8) transmits the selected information as a junction of priority over at least one or the recommended transmission bands.

Claims

1. A patient monitoring system, comprising:

a body network including;

at least one sensor that senses physiological information about a patient, and a cognitive device for communicating the physiological information to a remote location, the cognitive device including;

a cognitive radio that checks detected frequency spectra for unused bandwidth and recommends one or more bands on which to transmit clinically relevant information received from the body network to the remote location;

a cognitive monitor that receives the information from the body network, prioritizes the information based at least in part on a set of rules, and selects which information to transmit based on the prioritization and the recommended transmission bands; and

a transmitter that transmits the selected information as a function of priority over at least one or the recommended transmission bands.

2. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the cognitive radio selects the transmission bands from the spectrum based in part on at least one of noise and quantity of unused bandwidth available.

3. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the information received from the body network includes at least one of an Electrocardiogram, an Electroencephalogram, an Electromyogram, a non-invasive blood pressure, pulse, respirations, blood oxygen, and core body temperature.

4. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the cognitive monitor parses the received information into one or more groups of related information.

5. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 4, wherein the cognitive monitor compares the related information within a group for consistency and discards inconsistent information.

6. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the cognitive monitor determines a level of noise in the received information and prioritizes the information from information with the least amount of noise to the information with the greatest amount of noise.

7. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the cognitive monitor determines a degree of artifact in the received information and prioritizes the information from information with the least artifact to the information with the greatest artifact.

8. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the set of rules prioritize the received information based on at least one of:

a person'"'"'s known physiological condition;

clinical events deemed relevant to a monitoring clinician; and

a predetermined priority defined by an administering clinician.

9. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the cognitive radio continuously checks available frequency bands and dynamically updates the cognitive monitor with a band to use for transmission.

10. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 9, wherein the cognitive monitor periodically analyzes the information remaining to be transmitted and the current transmission band, and re-prioritizes the information for transmission.

11. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, the cognitive monitor includes:

a reasoner component that analyzes spectrum characteristics to which spectrum to recommend as transmission spectrum.

12. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 11, the characteristics include at least one of noise, total bandwidth, unused bandwidth, application, and frequency range.

13. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 11, the reasoner component includes:

a set of rules representing algorithms; and

an inference engine that draws inferences from at least one of a FCC policy, a device capability, a current transmission/reception condition, and radio domain knowledge based on the rules.

14. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, the cognitive monitor includes:

a ranking component that ranks the information received from the body network based on quality;

a reasoner component that selects which signals to transmit based on the ranked information and the transmission spectrum.

15. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 14, the reasoner component further bases its decision on at least one of a monitoring capability, an application requirement, and an environmental characteristic.

16. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 14, the reasoner component includes:

a set of rules representing algorithms; and

an inference engine that draws inferences from one or more of a monitoring capability, an application requirements, an environmental characteristic, and a recommended transmission spectrum based on the rules.

17. A cognitive device for use in the patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1.

18. A cognitive device that facilitates monitoring information form-a wireless network, comprising:

a cognitive radio that checks detected frequency spectrum for unused bandwidth and recommends one or more bands for transmitting clinically relevant information received from the wireless network to a monitoring system;

a cognitive monitor that receives the information from the wireless network, prioritizes the information based at least in part on a set of rules, and selects which information to transmit based on the prioritization and the recommended transmission bands; and

a transmitter that transmits the selected information as a function of priority to the monitoring system over at least one or the recommended transmission bands.

19. A method for conveying physiological information received from a body network, which senses the physiological information, to a remote location, comprising:

receiving one or more physiological information carrying signals from the body network;

grouping the signals based on type;

prioritizing the signals within each group;

prioritizing the groups;

locating frequency bands with at least a portion of bandwidth available for transmitting the signals, and selecting a transmission band based oil qualitative and quantitative transmission characteristics;

selecting one or more of the signals to transmit based on signal priority and the band characteristics; and

transmitting the selected signals over the selected band to the remote location.

20. A cognitive computer device programmed to perform the method of claim 19.