Wireless medical monitoring device

• US 8,979,756 B2
• Filed: 04/28/2006
• Issued: 03/17/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 05/06/2005
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Koninklijke Philips N.V.)
• Original Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Inventors: Alsafadi, Yasser, Ali, Walid S. I.
• Primary Examiner(s): Jackson, Gary
• Assistant Examiner(s): SORIANO, BOBBY GILES
• Application Number:
  US11/913,496
• Publication Number:
  US 20080194925A1
• Time in Patent Office: 3,245 Days
• Field of Search: None
• 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 wireless body area network including;

at least one sensor that senses physiological information from a patient and wirelessly sends the physiological information on the wireless body area network; and

a cognitive device which receives the physiological information from the wireless body area network and wirelessly communicates the physiological information to a remote location, the cognitive device including;

a cognitive radio which monitors an RF frequency spectra including frequency spectra assigned to a primary user for unused bandwidth, and identifies one or more available RF bands not in use by the primary user on which to transmit to the remote location, wherein the cognitive radio selects among the identified available RF bands from the spectrum based in part on a quantity of unused bandwidth available;

a cognitive monitor which receives the physiological information from the wireless body area network, the cognitive monitor including one or more computing devices programmed to;

parse the received physiological information into one or more groups of related physiological information, compare the related physiological information within each group for consistency, determine a degree of artifacting in the received physiological information, prioritize the physiological information based at least in part on a set of rules which prioritize the received information based on at least one of;

a physiological condition of the patient, clinical events deemed relevant to a monitoring clinician, and the degree of artifacting, and select which physiological information to transmit based on (1) the prioritization and (2) the available RF bands identified by the cognitive radio;

an RF transmitter controlled by the cognitive monitor to transmit the selected physiological information as a function of priority over at least one of the identified available RF bands; and

a buffer for buffering the physiological information and which is activated in response to no suitable unused bandwidth being available,

wherein the cognitive monitor determines a level of noise in the received information and prioritizes the received information with the received information with the least amount of noise having a highest prioritization and the received information with the greatest amount of noise having a lowest prioritization.

2. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1, wherein the cognitive radio continuously checks the RF spectra and dynamically updates the cognitive monitor with the available RF bands.

3. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 2, wherein the one or more computing devices is further programmed to:

periodically analyze the physiological information remaining to be transmitted and the available RF bands, and re-prioritize the physiological information for transmission based on the available RF bands and the physiological information remaining to be transmitted.

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

a reasoner component that analyzes spectrum characteristics of the available RF bands to determine on which available RF band to transmit.

5. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 4, wherein the characteristics include at least one of noise, total bandwidth, unused bandwidth, application, and frequency range.

6. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 4, the reasoner component includes:

a set of rules representing algorithms; and

one or more computing devices programmed to draw 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 to select the RF band to transmit.

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

a ranking component that ranks the physiological information received from the patient monitoring network based on quality; and

the one or more computing devices is further programmed to prioritize the physiological information based on ranking of the physiological information.

8. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 7, wherein the set of rules represent algorithms.

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

13. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 1 wherein the cognitive radio determines constraints on transmission parameters to limit interferences with RF transmissions by the primary user.

10. A cognitive device that receives physiological information from a patient monitoring network, comprising:

a cognitive radio which monitors RF frequency spectra also used by one or more other users for unused RF bands and characteristics of the unused RF bands including noise and bandwidth, and which identifies one or more available RF bands on which to transmit to a remote location and identifies constraints on transmission parameters for the available RF bands to limit interference with RF transmission of the other users of the RF spectrum, wherein the transmission parameters include frequency, maximum power, coding scheme, and protocol described in a XML document;

a buffer memory;

one or more computing devices programmed to;

parse physiological information received from the patient monitoring network into one or more groups of related physiological information,

compare the related physiological information within each group for consistency,

determine a degree of artifacting in the received physiological information,

prioritize the physiological information based at least in part on a set of rules which prioritize the received information based on at least one of;

a physiological condition of the patient, clinical events deemed relevant to a monitoring clinician, and the degree of artifacting, and

select which physiological information to transmit based on the prioritization and the RF bands identified by the cognitive radio as being available,

buffer the physiological information in the buffer memory, when no suitable unused RF bands are available; and

an RF transmitter controlled by the cognitive monitor to transmit the selected physiological information over at least one of the identified available RF bands.

12. A body coupled network including:

the cognitive device as set forth in claim 10; and

a plurality of sensors which sense the physiological information from a patient and wirelessly transmit the sensed physiological information to the cognitive device.

14. The cognitive device as set forth in claim 10, wherein identifying the constraints by the cognitive radio includes applying rules which draw inferences from one or more of an FCC policy, current transmission/reception conditions, and radio domain knowledge.

15. The cognitive device as set forth in claim 10 wherein cognitive radio continuously checks the RF frequency spectra for transmissions by the other users and changes the constraints on the transmission parameters in response to the transmissions by other users.

18. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 10, wherein the one or more computing devices is further programmed to:

periodically analyze the physiological information remaining to be transmitted and the available RF bands, and re-prioritize the physiological information for transmission based on the available RF bands and the physiological information remaining to be transmitted.

11. A system for conveying physiological information comprising:

one or more sensors which sense the physiological information from a patient and send the sensed physiological information on a body network;

one or more computing devices programmed to;

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

group the physiological information carrying signals based on type;

prioritize the physiological information carrying signals within each group;

prioritize the physiological information carrying groups;

locate RF bands with at least a portion of bandwidth available for transmitting physiological information carried by the signals;

applying rules to draw inferences from at least one of FCC policy, device capability, current transmission reception environment, and radio domain knowledge to determine qualitative and/or quantitative RF transmission characteristics of the located RF bands;

select one or more of the located RF bands with a portion of bandwidth available based on the qualitative and/or the quantitative RF transmission characteristics;

select the physiological information carried by one or more of the physiological information carrying signals to transmit based on (1) the determined prioritization and (2) the RF transmission band characteristics; and

buffer the physiological information in a buffer memory when no suitable unused bandwidth is available;

an RF transmitter which transmits the selected physiological information over the one or more selected RF bands to the remote location.

16. The system as set forth in claim 11 wherein the qualitative and/or quantitative transmission characteristics are determined by drawing inferences from a user of FCC policy, device compatibility, transmission/reception environment, and radio domain knowledge.

17. The system as set forth in claim 11 wherein at least some of the RF bands are shared with other users and wherein the one or more computing device is further programmed to:

determine constraints on transmission parameters for RF transmissions on the selected RF band to limit interference with transmissions of other users; and

continuously monitor for transmissions by others and dynamically update at least one of the selected RF band and the determined constraints.

19. The patient monitoring system as set forth in claim 11, wherein the one or more computing devices is further programmed to:

continuously analyze the physiological information remaining to be transmitted and the available RF bands, and re-prioritize the physiological information for transmission based on the available RF bands and the physiological information remaining to be transmitted.