Portable electronic instrument and method

• US 5,181,521 A
• Filed: 11/06/1987
• Issued: 01/26/1993
• Est. Priority Date: 03/20/1986
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Jerome H. Lemelson
• Original Assignee: Jerome H. Lemelson
• Inventors: Lemelson, Jerome H.
• Primary Examiner(s): Shay, David M.
• Application Number:
  US07/117,809
• Time in Patent Office: 1,908 Days
• Field of Search: 128/639, 128/662, 128/663, 128/670, 128/687, 128/689-691, 128/711, 128/736, 374/142, 374/170, 374/186, 364/557, 364/418
• US Class Current: 600/549
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0431 Portable apparatus, e.g. comprising a handle or case
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/02055 Simultaneously evaluating both cardiovascular condition and temperature
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/741 using synthesised speech
• CPC Class Codes: G01K 13/20 Clinical contact thermometers for use with humans or animals

Abstract

An electronic thermometer and a method for sensing, indicating and recording temperatures of one or more living beings such as patients in a hospital. In a preferred form, the instrument is portable and contains on-board means for selectively reproducing signals defining past temperatures made of an individual and applying same to a visual display, a printer and/or an external memory such as associated with a master or storage computer for a medical facility or hospital. The playback control includes means such as a keyboard or series of switches, for reproducing just those temperature signals which were generated when a select person'"'"'s temperature was taken over a select period of time to the exclusion of other signals recorded in the instrument'"'"'s memory. Auxilliary subsystems may include a microphone and recorder of speech signals indicative of the identity of the person whose temperature is measured, a light pen or other means for generating and recording signals indicative of the identity of the persons whose temperatures are sensed, a speaker for generating sounds of synthetic or recorded speech indicative of temperatures taken and the persons whose temperatures are taken, time and date signal generating and indicating means, etc. The instrument also includes inputs for transducers for sensing other variables such as heartbeat and electronic circuitry for receiving signals from such sensors and calculating one or more physiological variables to be recorded and displayed.

Claims

1. A portable electronic thermometer in accordance with claim 1 wherein said third means is supported by said portable housing and includes a microphone for receiving sounds of select speech spoken in the vicinity of said housing, electronic speech recognition computing means within said housing and connected to receive, process and analyze the speech signals output by said microphone and generate respective coded electrical signals, said third means also including a memory containing recordings of codes indicative of the identity of a plurality of living beings whose temperatures are periodically caused to be sensed by said first means and means for addressing said memory with coded electrical signals generated when said speech recognition computing means recognizes select speech spoken into said microphone to cause select code signals to be generated on the output of said memory and to be recorded in said memory of said fifth means along with respective codes representative of temperatures generated on the output of said third means.