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Reliable, real-time heart and respiratory rates are key vital signs used in evaluating the physiological status in many clinical and non-clinical settings. Measuring these vital signs generally requires superficial attachment of physically or logistically obtrusive sensors to subjects that may result in skin irritation or adversely influence subject performance. Given the broad acceptance of ingestible electronics, we developed an approach that enables vital sign monitoring internally from the gastrointestinal tract. Here we report initial proof-of-concept large animal (porcine) experiments and a robust processing algorithm that demonstrates the feasibility of this approach. Implementing vital sign monitoring as a stand-alone technology or in conjunction with other ingestible devices has the capacity to significantly aid telemedicine, optimize performance monitoring of athletes, military service members, and first-responders, as well as provide a facile method for rapid clinical evaluation and triage. ; United States. Dept. of the Air Force (Air Force Contract FA8721-05-C-0002) ; United States. Dept. of Defense. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering ; National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant EB000244) ; National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant T32DK7191-38-S1)

The aim of the Northern Territory Government's Growth Assessment and Action (GAA) program is to improve the growth and nutritional status of children 0-5 years living in remote communities. GAA involves regular monitoring of growth and implementation of early action if growth falters. This report presents the results of the GAA data collection.

The aim of the Northern Territory Government's Growth Assessment and Action (GAA) program is to improve the growth and nutritional status of children 0-5 years living in remote communities. GAA involves regular monitoring of growth and implementation of early action if growth falters. This report presents the results of the GAA data collection.

The aim of the Northern Territory Government's Growth Assessment and Action (GAA) program is to improve the growth and nutritional status of children 0-5 years living in remote communities. GAA involves regular monitoring of growth and implementation of early action if growth falters. This report presents the results of the GAA data collection. ; Date:2006-04

This review is divided into three sections: technologies for monitoring physiological parameters; biosensors for chemical assays and wireless communications technologies including image transmissions. Applications range from monitoring high risk patients for heart, respiratory activity and falls to sensing levels of physical activity in military, rescue, and sports personnel. The range of measurements include, heart rate, pulse wave form, respiratory rate, blood oxygen, tissue pCO2, exhaled carbon dioxide and physical activity. Other feasible measurements will employ miniature chemical laboratories on silicon or plastic chips. The measurements can be extended to clinical chemical assays ranging from common blood assays to protein or specialized protein measurements (e.g., troponin, creatine, and cytokines such as TNF and IL6). Though the feasibility of using wireless technology to communicate vital signs has been demonstrated 32 years ago (1) it has been only recently that practical and portable devices and communications net works have become generally available for inexpensive deployment of comfortable and affordable devices and systems.

Fourth generation aircraft, such as the McDonnell Douglas F-15 "Eagle," and the fifth generation platforms that followed, including the Lockheed Martin F-22 "Raptor," pose unique physiological challenges to arguably the most important "system" on the aircraft, the human. Advances in aeronautical engineering have enabled next-generation aircraft to operate well beyond the natural limits of human endurance. Although the demand for unmanned systems is increasing exponentially, continued use of manned aircraft is still desirable within civilian and military operations for various safety and security reasons. With the continued presence of pilots in cockpits, future aircraft designers will require a basic understanding of the unique physiological factors affecting human performance in this domain. Given knowledge of human limitations, strategies for real-time on board monitoring of the "human system" may be employed to increase the safety of the pilot and aircraft.

Tese de doutoramento em em Engenharia Informática, apresentada à Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra. ; Cardiovascular disease (CVD), a general name for a wide diversity of diseases, disorders and conditions that affect the heart and often the blood vessels, is the largest cause of death in the European Union. Since it is well known that heart health is linked to behaviour and lifestyle, the focus should be on prevention. In the context of preventive medicine, telemonitoring solutions are making a huge impact by enabling remote patient monitoring for the healthy and for those requiring management of chronic diseases. One of the projects that address CVDs management by means of telemonitoring is HeartCycle, a European Integrated Project (FP7-216695) that aims at researching, developing and clinically validating innovative solutions for this purpose. Particularly, the goal of HeartCycle is to improve the quality of care for coronary artery disease (CAD) and heart failure (HF) patients. Integrated in the third workpackage (WP3-Multi-parametric Analysis and Decision Support), the present thesis is centred on the development of specific clinical applications, which target cardiovascular conditions identified as relevant for the CAD/HF management, such as ischemia, arrhythmias and hypertension, based on the analysis and processing of the electrocardiogram (ECG) and blood pressure (BP) signals daily collected by home telemonitoring. Namely, investigation is made on techniques for the diagnosis of the referred conditions, and for the analysis of future trends of these signals enabling the early detection of critical events. Specifically, this thesis presents methodologies for similarity detection and prediction in biosignal time series, which are mainly founded on the representation of signals as linear combinations of a set of orthogonal basis and on the time-frequency analysis of those signals. Particularly, it proposes a new strategy for diagnosing ischemia comprising a measure for evaluating the ST deviation based on the time-frequency analysis of the ECG through the Wigner-Ville transform, and the use of Hermite basis functions to capture the most relevant morphologic characteristics of the QRS complex. This methodology was tested using the European Society of Cardiology ST-T public database, and the relevant results achieved, namely a sensitivity of 96.7% and a positive predictivity of 96.2%, confirmed its potential. Additionally, a new similarity measure based on a combination of the wavelet transform with the Karhunen-Loève transform for temporal patterns detection in biosignal time series, mainly to support prediction methodologies, was developed. The respective validation was performed by quantitatively comparing the proposed measure with other three common measures through the use of data from a public dataset of Physionet (MIMIC-II) and from a private telemonitoring platform (TEN-HMS). The obtained results confirm that the proposed similarity is particularly appropriate to deal with noise, trends and signals that are not perfectly aligned in time. Moreover, an iterative implementation allows for its efficient computational implementation. In terms of predictive strategies two approaches are explored. The first, based on generalized regression neural networks integrated into a multi-model structure is designed for the accurate prediction of time series future values. It was applied in the prediction of acute hypotensive episodes (AHE) and validated in the context of the 2009 Physionet/Computers in Cardiology Challenge using data from MIMIC-II dataset. A correct prediction of 10 out of 10 AHE for test set A and of 37 out of 40 AHE for test set B was achieved, corresponding to the best results of all entries in the two events of the challenge. The main advantage of the second approach is that it does not require the development of a model. It exploits the multi-resolution analysis provided by the wavelet transform to estimate future evolution trend of biosignals, based on the trend evolution of similar historic signals. Its validity was demonstrated by the comparison with other common predictive methodologies. It was employed in the evaluation of the hypertension risk using data from TEN-HMS and MyHeart studies. The obtained results, in terms of Sensitivity-Specificity, were of 84.2%-75.5% and of 85.7%-91.8%, respectively, for the TEN-HMS and the MyHeart datasets, confirming the capability of the approach in this type of application.

Die Übergangsbestimmungen des EEG 2014 sind komplex, fehler- und haftungsanfällig. Wer mit dem EEG befasst ist, wird daher oft vor der aufwendigen Aufgabe stehen, über lange Verweisketten die richtige Auslegung zu finden. Dazu gilt es, verschiedenste Stellen des aktuellen EEG sowie der früheren Gesetzesfassungen aufzuschlagen. Zudem ist auch die Begründung zu würdigen, der nun eine weitaus höhere Bedeutung als bei den vorhergehenden Fassungen zukommt. Doch es geht auch komfortabel: Mit dem Werk "Übergangsbestimmungen im EEG 2014". Dieses kommentiert die vorgenannten Regelungen als zentralen

Chen, Xijun. ; Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. ; Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-77). ; Abstracts in English and Chinese. ; Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 ; Chapter 1.1 --- Design Challenges --- p.2 ; Chapter 1.2 --- Wireless Sensor Network Applications --- p.6 ; Chapter 1.2.1 --- Military Applications --- p.7 ; Chapter 1.2.2 --- Environmental Applications --- p.9 ; Chapter 1.2.3 --- Health Applications --- p.11 ; Chapter 1.3 --- Wireless Biomedical Sensor Networks (WBSN) --- p.12 ; Chapter 1.4 --- Text Organization --- p.13 ; Chapter Chapter 2 --- Design a Wearable Platform for Wireless Biomedical Sensor Networks --- p.15 ; Chapter 2.1 --- Objective --- p.17 ; Chapter 2.2 --- Requirements for Wireless Medical Sensors --- p.19 ; Chapter 2.3 --- Hardware design --- p.21 ; Chapter 2.3.1 --- Materials and Methods --- p.21 ; Chapter 2.3.2 --- Results --- p.24 ; Chapter 2.3.3 --- Conclusion --- p.27 ; Chapter 2.4 --- Software design --- p.28 ; Chapter 2.4.1 --- TinyOS --- p.28 ; Chapter 2.4.2 --- Software Organization --- p.28 ; Chapter Chapter 3 --- Wireless Medical Sensors --- p.32 ; Chapter 3.1 --- Sensing Physiological Information --- p.32 ; Chapter 3.1.1 --- Pulse Oximetry --- p.32 ; Chapter 3.1.2 --- Electrocardiograph --- p.36 ; Chapter 3.1.3 --- Galvanic Skin Response --- p.41 ; Chapter 3.2 --- Location Tracking --- p.43 ; Chapter 3.2.1 --- Outdoor Location Tracking --- p.43 ; Chapter 3.2.2 --- Indoor Location Tracking --- p.44 ; Chapter 3.3 --- Motion Tracking --- p.49 ; Chapter 3.3.1 --- Technology --- p.50 ; Chapter 3.3.2 --- Motion Analysis Sensor Board --- p.51 ; Chapter 3.4 --- Discussions --- p.52 ; Chapter Chapter 4 --- Applications in Medical Care --- p.54 ; Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.54 ; Chapter 4.2 --- Wearable Wireless Body Area Network --- p.56 ; Chapter 4.2.1 --- Architecture --- p.58 ; Chapter 4.2.2 --- Deployment Scenarios --- p.62 ; Chapter 4.3 --- Application in Ambulatory Setting --- p.63 ; Chapter 4.3.1 --- Method --- p.64 ...

BACKGROUND: Both intracranial pressure (ICP) and the cerebrovascular pressure reactivity represent the dysregulation of pathways directly involved in traumatic brain injury (TBI) pathogenesis and have been used to inform clinical management. However, how these parameters evolve over time following injury and whether this evolution has any prognostic importance have not been studied. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We analysed the temporal profile of ICP and pressure reactivity index (PRx), examined their relation to TBI-specific mortality, and determined if the prognostic relevance of these parameters was affected by their temporal profile using mixed models for repeated measures of ICP and PRx for the first 240 hours from the time of injury. A total of 601 adults with TBI, admitted between September 2002 to January 2016, and with high-resolution continuous monitoring from a single centre, were studied. At 6 months postinjury, 133 (19%) patients had a fatal outcome; of those, 88 (78%) died from nonsurvivable TBI or brain death. The difference in mean ICP between those with a fatal outcome and functional survivors was only significant for the first 168 hours after injury (all p < 0.05). For PRx, those patients with a fatal outcome also had a higher (more impaired) PRx throughout the first 120 hours after injury (all p < 0.05). The separation of ICP and PRx was greatest in the first 72 hours after injury. Mixed models demonstrated that the explanatory power of the PRx decreases over time; therefore, the prognostic weight assigned to PRx should similarly decrease. However, the ability of ICP to predict a fatal outcome remained relatively stable over time. As control of ICP is the central purpose of TBI management, it is likely that some of the information that is reflected in the natural history of ICP changes is no longer apparent because of therapeutic intervention. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrated the temporal evolution of ICP and PRx and their relationship with fatal outcome, indicating a potential early prognostic and therapeutic window. The combination of dynamic monitoring variables and their time profile improved prediction of outcome. Therefore, time-driven dynamic modelling of outcome in patients with severe TBI may allow for more accurate and clinically useful prediction models. Further research is needed to confirm and expand on these findings. ; DKM is supported by a Senior Investigator award from the NIHR and a European Union Seventh Framework Program grant (CENTER-TBI; grant no. 602150). PJH is supported by a Research Professorship from the NIHR, the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

A measurement is always afflicted with some degree of uncertainty. A correct understanding of the different types of uncertainty, their naming, and their definition is of crucial importance for an appropriate use of the measuring instruments. However, in perioperative and intensive care medicine, the metrological requirements for measuring instruments are poorly defined and often used spuriously. The correct use of metrological terms is also of crucial importance in validation studies. The European Union published a new directive on medical devices, mentioning that in the case of devices with a measuring function, the notified body is involved in all aspects relating to the conformity of the device with the metrological requirements. It is therefore the task of scientific societies to establish the standards in their area of expertise. After adopting the same understandings and definitions (part 1), the different procedures for the validation of major quality criteria of measuring devices must be consensually established. In this metrologic review (part 2), we review the terms and definitions of validation, some basic processes leading to the display of an indication from a physiologic signal, and procedures for the validation of measuring instrument properties, with specific focus on perioperative and intensive care medicine including appropriate examples.

A measurement is always afflicted with some degree of uncertainty. A correct understanding of the different types of uncertainty, their naming, and their definition is of crucial importance for an appropriate use of the measuring instruments. However, in perioperative and intensive care medicine, the metrological requirements for measuring instruments are poorly defined and often used spuriously. The correct use of metrological terms is also of crucial importance in validation studies. The European Union published a new directive on medical devices, mentioning that in the case of devices with a measuring function, the notified body is involved in all aspects relating to the conformity of the device with the metrological requirements. It is therefore the task of scientific societies to establish the standards in their area of expertise. After adopting the same understandings and definitions (part 1), the different procedures for the validation of major quality criteria of measuring devices must be consensually established. In this metrologic review (part 2), we review the terms and definitions of validation, some basic processes leading to the display of an indication from a physiologic signal, and procedures for the validation of measuring instrument properties, with specific focus on perioperative and intensive care medicine including appropriate examples.

Despesa energètica; Telèfon intel·ligent; Lesió de la medul·la espinal ; Gasto energético; Teléfono inteligente; Lesión de la médula espinal ; Energy expenditure; Smartphone; Spinal cord injury ; This study aimed to investigate the validity of using built-in smartphone accelerometers to estimate the active energy expenditures of full-time manual wheelchair users with spinal cord injury (SCI). Twenty participants with complete SCI completed 10 5-min daily activities that involved the upper limbs, during which their oxygen consumption and upper limb activity were registered using a portable gas analyzer and a smartphone (placed on the non-dominant arm), respectively. Time series of 1-min averaged oxygen consumption and 55 accelerometer variables (13 variables for each of the four axes and three additional variables for the correlations between axes) were used to estimate three multiple linear models, using a 10-fold cross-validation method. The results showed that models that included either all variables and models or that only included the linear variables showed comparable performance, with a correlation of 0.72. Slightly worse general performance was demonstrated by the model that only included non-linear variables, although it proved to be more accurate at estimating the energy expenditures (EE) during specific tasks. These results suggest that smartphones could be a promising low-cost alternative to laboratory-grade accelerometers to estimate the energy expenditure of wheelchair users with spinal cord injury during daily activities. ; This work was supported by Fundació la Marató de la TV3, under Projects 201720-10 and 201701-10, and European Union through the Operational Program of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) of the Valencian Community 2014-2020 (IDIFEDER/2018/029).