“By the close of academic Week 8 you will have completed the skills rotation section of this module.
It is now time for you to demonstrate your understanding of the key skills covered across the disciplines, by creatively combining them into one complete output.
You are tasked to produce a proof of concept PDF document that responds to one of the following themes:
Making simple music
The death of newspapers/books
Personal security
The Digital Doctor
Toy Hack ” – copied from the Digital Media powerpoint
I quickly chose to make a device that awakes asthmatics when they have an asthma crisis while asleep. The device would monitor the individuals breathing and wake it up before the asthma crisis reaches a critical state, where the asthmatic awakes unpleasantly and abrupt, often in slight panic.
I found a lot of baby breathing monitor mats that get placed under the mattress during my research, but no such monitors that were meant for adults (except for one that was built for young children, but could also be used for adults) The baby breathing monitors were a good start, but have one big flaw : The individual that is monitored can easily roll off of the mat and that already sets of the alarm. I wanted to make a monitoring device that is fixed directly to the body, so that no such false alarms could occur. I thought of fitness belts that are worn under the clothes, placed in the middle of the torso. They already exist and use bluetooth to communicate data to either a smart watch or a smart phone. After a while I found some breathing monitors for home use, but they seemed impractical, not easy to use and had many wires and cables that had to be attached to the individual.
After a talk with my tutor I came to the conclusion that an app for smart phones with a small bluetooth sensor would be a good idea, so I started to look for existing apps and sensors and found nothing that was like my idea, so this was completely new ground. The apps that I found were mostly fitness apps that would tell the user how he breaths using the before mentioned fitness belts or how fast or slow their pulse is using a smart watch.
One particular breathing monitor that I found during my research helped a lot to develop my device. It uses an ‘Acoustic Sensor’ that is attached with normal patches to the side of the neck. Found at http://www.masimo.com/rra/
I then looked at adhesives, that would not loose their adhesive power and could be reused many times. I found this silicone material that sticks to skin, but still lets the skin breathe. It can be washed with water and endlessly reused. Found at : http://www.silbione.com/products/skin-adhesives
A small flat bluetooth sensor could than be placed under this silicone strip and could be comfortably attached to the neck, where it monitors the trachea and sends the data to the smart phone app.
The smart phone app has a diary-like function. It tells you how you breathed while you slept and if there were abnormalities in the breathing you can take a note of what you think could have triggered this breathing abnormality or asthma attack. In the case of heavy breathing abnormalities the app wakes the individual up with a normal alarm sound that the individual can choose.
The app itself has a community that shares their data with each other, which can help individuals learn more about themselves and why they suffer from breathing abnormalities. Since it is very hard to figure out what triggered an asthma attack, the individual can read through other people’s experience and may find out that way what the individual should avoid eating/drinking or doing in the future. Since this is very useful for researchers and GPs too, they can have access to this shared data over the app.
Since asthma is not the only illness that causes breathing abnormalities, ‘apnoea’ or the much more severe cases ‘Hypoxia’ and ‘Hypoxemia’ this device can be used for many other diseases too. The app is easy to use and the sensor only needs to be attached to the neck, so it is possible for people of every age to use this to monitor their breathing.
list of research :
Old patent
http://www.google.com/patents/US4696307
information on nocturnal asthma
http://www.webmd.com/asthma/guide/nocturnal-asthma-nighttime-asthma
http://www.ebme.co.uk/articles/clinical-engineering/6-apnoea-alarms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND2A5ZOTFMY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxdKTeCGnf0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNE77zd7J0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAReJ0u3caU
Recent Comments