At CES 2019, imec, a Belgian organization, and the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, presented their latest vitals monitoring patch. The disposable device has a monitoring lifetime of over a week, but since the battery is made of non-toxic materials there’s not a big environmental impact.
The device has a basic ECG built-in, can measure blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), a newly introduced feature, physical activity thanks to an accelerometer, and it also sports a bioelectrical impedance monitor.
It is smaller, more comfortable, and much cheaper to manufacture than theprevious model that was presented a couple years ago.
“Traditionally, blood oxygen saturation is measured with a separate device attached to the finger. This is not very practical for daily living, so we developed a new technique that performs the measurement with a chest patch, via reflective photoplethysmography. By adding this sensing capability to our wearable solution, we are now able to measure three essential vital signs – heart rate, breathing rate and blood oxygen saturation – with a single unobtrusive and comfortable chest patch,” said Bernard Grundlehner, System Architect – Connected Health Solutions at imec, in a statement.
