Trials have started on patients at St Mary's Hospital, London on a wireless digital plaster that tracks vital signs without being hooked up to expensive bedside monitoring equipment. Clearly this is a technology that will migrate to fully printed electronics.
The digital plaster looks like an ordinary sticking plaster about the size of a large playing card but loaded with electronics. The stick on device replaces tens of thousands of pounds worth of bedside monitoring equipment for use with patients in hospital. Instead of a nurse taking vital sign readings such as heart rate, temperature and respiration rates, the digital plaster is placed on the chest of the patient and is able to wirelessly send data in real time to the hospital network or a doctor's mobile phone or PDA, alerting staff immediately of any critical changes.
The Sensium technology developed by Toumaz Technology uses a tiny radio incorporated into a silicon chip embedded in the digital plaster. The radio picks up information by speaking to a gateway device, which is then sent to the hospital network. Should radio interference occur from other medical devices, the data is stored in the memory until a clear channel is found when the data can be sent through. Because the radio technology is running at about 20 - 30,000 times less power than a mobile phone the interference from the device is minimal.
Global demands on healthcare are changing with an increase in people over 65 coupled with poor diet, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle are all factors leading to a huge increase in long term patients with one or more chronic diseases. Healthcare budgets are already overstretched and the clearly forecasted additional demands are simply unsustainable using current practice. The treatment and management of chronic diseases needs to be revolutionized with easy to use, mobile, low cost technologies that enable patients to be monitored in real time at home as well as in hospitals - freeing up resources so they can be used else where.
The first phase of the trials was successful and made sure that the technology platforms were performing well. The next phase will use patients who are undergoing surgery - the plasters will be positioned on the patients who will be monitored before, during and after an operation. First results are expected soon.
What is particularly clever about this device is that most of the functions needed are on a small silicon chip 4x4mm, which houses the radio, computer and the interfaces needed to pick up signals from the body. The low cost device lasts for several days before it needs to be replaced and because it is disposable, problems such as cross infection are eliminated.
Like many other new technologies unexpected applications are likely to be put in place in the future - one suggestion was a game show where the audiences' vital signs could be monitored on a big screen.
Co-founder of the company Professor Toumazou who developed the technology foundation was recently named as the winner of the World Technology Award 2009 for Health and Medicine.
