Wearable medical devices have the advantages of easy operation, long-term use, non-invasiveness, and real-time monitoring, among others. With the growing concept of preventive medicine and personal health care, more and more people are starting to use wearable medical devices to monitor their own health status.
Principle
Wearable medical devices usually use a Bluetooth communication interface for power saving, miniaturization, and other purposes. Therefore, when physiological signals measured by wearable medical devices need to be transmitted to mobile phones, computers, or other devices for reading, monitoring, or analyzing, a set of hardware, software, or equipment is needed to convert Bluetooth signals into network signals. The following diagram illustrates how to convert Bluetooth signals into network signals.
As illustrated in the figure, there are three ways to convert Bluetooth signals into network signals: bedside monitors and their signal conversion software, mobile devices/APPs, and WiFi Gateways.
Used in institutional care, long-term care facilities, and healthcare villages
Residents/patients in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and healthcare villages mostly stay in fixed places and need to be monitored to determine if they have stayed in a specific space for too long due to accidents. By using the Wearable Medical Device with a WiFi Gateway, the location information from the WiFi Gateway and physiological signal information from the Wearable Medical Device can be used to monitor the status of the residents/patients and provide timely assistance.
For tracking out-of-hospital and discharged patients
Most chronic disease patients and post-surgical patients still need to track their health status between discharge and return to the hospital, which the doctors need to evaluate and analyze to assess their medical conditions. The use of wearable medical devices with the patient's own cell phone and the hospital's proprietary APP and cloud system can record the patient's physiological signal information at any time. When the hospital performs real-time monitoring, they can also provide timely assistance. When the patient returns to the hospital, the doctor can directly view the physiological signal information of the patient during the period after discharge for evaluation and analysis.
Application of health management and home sleep monitoring
With the rising awareness of preventive medicine and the fact that people now pay more and more attention to their daily health care and sleep quality. If the physiological signal information of individuals during daily activities can be recorded and analyzed, medical consultation and early treatment can be obtained at the early stage of the disease. Moreover, the physiological signal information monitored during sleep can not only be used as a reference for personal health management, but also to understand the state of sleep and assess whether there is any undetected sleep-related disease.