The 3AHcare node: Health monitoring continuously

Abstract

We developed and tested the Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IECAS) 3AHcare node, a health monitoring device capable of measuring a subject's ECG, blood pressure, blood oxygenation, respiration, temperature and motion - almost equivalent to the feature set of a hospital bedside patient monitor. The main contribution of this paper include: the device has been a highly integrated design incorporating the radio and all associated circuitry on a single PCB; a new noninvasive and cuff-less measurement of blood pressure using pulse wave transit time has been designed and validated. The device stores data locally on microSD flash and /or transmits via Bluetooth and/or Zigbee. We have developed a bandage vest which embeds reusable electrodes for data acquisition as well as a desktop and mobile application for real-time data telemetry. We have evaluated the performance of the device in capturing and recording ambulatory data and found the device easy to use and with high precision.