Internal medicine

Radiology

Heart rate monitor

Bluetooth

Wireless

Blood pressure

Accelerometer

Operating system

Photoplethysmogram

Wearable computer

Engineering

Embedded system

Remote patient monitoring

Operations management

Continuous monitoring

Mobile phone

Heart rate

Smartwatch

Computer science

Real-time computing

Medicine

Telecommunications

Cardiovascular diseases are a major threat to the lives of millions around the globe. Monitoring heart health via heart rate and variability analysis can help give insight into the full condition of a persons heart health. However, it is often difficult to accomplish constant monitoring, due to the size and invasiveness of some monitors, such as ECG chest bands and wrist-worn sensors. A possible solution to this, in order to allow for more frequent health monitoring, could be a wearable ring sensor, worn on the finger, that measures heart rate and activity via a reflective photoplethysmogram (PPG) sensor and an accelerometer. This was explored, and a prototype was built, which sent data over Bluetooth 4.0 (BLE) to an Internet-connected mobile phone. The algorithm utilizes an optimized advanced moving average and IIR filtering, as well as a derivative based peak detection to measure accurate beats per minute and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) parameters, against an FDA approved commercial heart rate monitoring device. The results were found to be within 2% of conventional finger-clip PPG sensors. This fact, coupled with the small non-intrusive size of a ring, means this model could lead to further solutions regarding monitoring personal heart health.

Real-time Wireless Health Monitoring: An Ultra-low Power Biosensor Ring for Heart Disease Monitoring