Cuffless blood pressure monitoring appliance

• US 7,539,532 B2
• Filed: 05/12/2006
• Issued: 05/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/12/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Bao Tran
• Inventors: Tran, Bao
• Primary Examiner(s): Layno, Carl H
• Assistant Examiner(s): Gedeon, Brian T
• Application Number:
  US11/433,900
• Publication Number:
  US 20070265533A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,110 Days
• Field of Search: 600/528, 600/509, 600/513
• US Class Current: 600/509
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2503/08 Elderly
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 2560/0412 Low-profile patch shaped housings
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0006 ECG or EEG signals
• 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 5/0077 Devices for viewing the surface of the body, e.g. camera, magnifying lens
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0205 Simultaneously evaluating both cardiovascular conditions and different types of body conditions, e.g. heart and respiratory condition
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/021 Measuring pressure in heart or blood vessels A61B5/0205 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/02108 from analysis of pulse wave characteristics
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1112 Global tracking of patients, e.g. by using GPS
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1113 Local tracking of patients, e.g. in a hospital or private home
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1117 Fall detection
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/242 Detecting biomagnetic fields, e.g. magnetic fields produced by bioelectric currents
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/318 Heart-related electrical modalities, e.g. electrocardiography [ECG]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/411 Detecting or monitoring allergy or intolerance reactions to an allergenic agent or substance
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4806 Sleep evaluation A61B5/4821 takes precedence; devices for inducing sleep A61M21/02
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/4833 Assessment of subject's compliance to treatment
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/6808 Diapers
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/681 Wristwatch-type devices
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7214 using signal cancellation, e.g. based on input of two identical physiological sensors spaced apart, or based on two signals derived from the same sensor, for different optical wavelengths
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7225 Details of analog processing, e.g. isolation amplifier, gain or sensitivity adjustment, filtering, baseline or drift compensation A61B5/30, A61B5/316 take precedence; transformers for specific applications H01F38/00; amplifiers H03F
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7257 : using Fourier transforms
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/726 : using Wavelet transforms
• 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: A61B 5/7267 : involving training the classification device
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7275 : Determining trends in physiological measurement data; Predicting development of a medical condition based on physiological measurements, e.g. determining a risk factor
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7282 : Event detection, e.g. detecting unique waveforms indicative of a medical condition A61B5/4094, A61B5/4818, A61B5/349, A61B5/0823 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7405 : using sound
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/746 : Alarms related to a physiological condition, e.g. details of setting alarm thresholds or avoiding false alarms alarms per se G08B
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7465 : Arrangements for interactive communication between patient and care services, e.g. by using a telephone network telemetry of measured physiological signal A61B5/0002
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 7/04 : Electric stethoscopes microphones, acoustic transducers therefor H04R
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/00 : Diagnosis using ultrasonic, sonic or infrasonic waves imaging of objects using sonar G01S15/00
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/565 : involving data transmission via a network
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 : for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16Z 99/00 : Subject matter not provided for in other main groups of this subclass

Abstract

A heart monitoring system for a person includes one or more wireless nodes forming a wireless mesh network and a wearable appliance having a sound transducer coupled to the wireless transceiver; and a heart disease recognizer coupled to the sound transducer to determine cardiovascular health and to transmit heart sound over the wireless mesh network to a remote listener or processor.

Claims

1. A heart monitoring system for a person, comprising:

one or more wireless nodes forming a wireless mesh network; and

a wearable appliance having

a wireless transceiver adapted to communicate with the one or more wireless nodes;

a sound transducer coupled to the wireless transceiver; and

a heart disease recognizer coupled to the sound transducer and programmed to determine cardiovascular health and to transmit heart sound over the wireless mesh network to a remote location if the heart disease recognizer identifies a cardiovascular problem.

2. The system of claim 1, comprising an accelerometer to detect a dangerous condition and to generate a warning when the dangerous condition is detected.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the appliance is coupled to one of:

a plain old telephone service (POTS) network and a public switched telephone network (PSTN) network through the mesh network.

4. The system of claim 1, comprising one of:

EKG detector, ECG detector, electromagnetic detector, ultrasonic detector, optical detector, a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) recognizer, a dynamic time warp (DTW) recognizer, a neural network, a fuzzy logic engine.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the appliance monitors patient movement.

6. The system of claim 1, comprising an in-door positioning system coupled to one or more mesh network appliances to provide location information.

7. The system of claim 1, comprising a call center coupled to the appliance to provide a human response.

8. The system of claim 1, comprising a web server coupled to the mesh network and to the plain old telephone service (POTS) to provide information to an authorized remote user.

9. The system of claim 1, comprising a wireless router coupled to the mesh network and wherein the wireless router comprises one of:

802.11 router, 802.16 router, WiFi router, WiMAX router, Bluetooth router, X10 router.

10. The system of claim 1, comprising a mesh network appliance coupled to a power line to communicate X10 data to and from the mesh network.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the appliance transmits and receives voice from the person over the mesh network.

12. The system of claim 1, comprising computer readable code to transmit a help request to a remote computer.

13. The system of claim 1, comprising voice over IP (VOIP) code to allow a user and a remote person to audibly communicate with each other.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the appliance transmits and receives voice from the person over the mesh network to one of:

a doctor, a nurse, a medical assistant, a caregiver, an emergency response unit, a family member.

15. The system of claim 1, comprising code to store and analyze patient information.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the patient information includes medicine taking habits, eating and drinking habits, sleeping habits, or excise habits.

17. The system of claim 1, further comprising a patient interface for accessing information including:

a touch screen;

voice-activated text reading; and

one touch telephone dialing.

18. The system of claim 1, comprising code to store and analyze information relating to the person'"'"'s habit.

19. The system of claim 1, comprising:

one or more cameras positioned to capture three dimensional (3D) video of the patient; and

a server coupled to the one or more cameras, the server executing code to detect a dangerous condition for the patient based on the 3D video and allow a remote third party to view images of the patient when the dangerous condition is detected.

20. A monitoring system for a person, comprising:

one or more wireless nodes forming a wireless mesh network; and

a wearable appliance having

a wireless transceiver adapted to communicate with the one or more wireless nodes;

a sound transducer coupled to an artery; and

a heart sound analyzer coupled to the sound transducer and the wireless transceiver, the heart sound analyzer programmed to detect cardiovascular health and transmit the heart sound from the sound transducer over the wireless mesh network to a remote location to render assistance.