Philips Research Press Release

Philips investigates new wireless health-monitoring solutions

Aachen, Germany -- Philips is currently researching wireless health-monitoring solutions to enable unobtrusive monitoring of people’s vital functions in the home. Investigations include a system platform for wireless medical body sensor networks, a health phone with integrated interface to the sensor network for mobile access to vital signs and personal health control, and Active Digital Aura, a novel concept that provides safe user identification and intuitive interaction with wireless systems.

It is well-known that once hospital patients reach a certain point in their treatment, they recover better at home. Ensuring quality of care at home is something that Philips Research addresses through participation in the Body Area System for Ubiquitous Multimedia Applications (BASUMA, www.basuma.de) project sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour (BMWA). Specifically Philips is active in researching body-area networks for in-home health monitoring. Containing several inter-communicating sensors, these body-area networks monitor vital functions such as heart rate, temperature, etc., make intelligent decisions about an individual’s state of health and pass on relevant data to the user or to health-care professionals.

The absence of wires between sensors means they can be built unobtrusively into items of clothing, while advanced low-power wireless technology and intelligent power management systems ensure that they can operate for months or years from tiny batteries.

Philips Research developed a prototype for a wireless sensor platform that will enable flexible wireless monitoring of, for example, a person’s ECG, or other vital parameters. The BASUMA consortium is currently working on an advanced version of the prototype platform, which exploits new radio technology for yielding higher bandwidth and providing more robust wireless networking and ranging capabilities. Target application areas of such a platform include remote monitoring of chronically ill or early discharged patients at home and away.

In a prototype application, a low-power system has already been integrated with a phone to allow constant mobile monitoring. The phone collects various vital-sign data from the sensors and is capable of sending it to a care-provider’s back-end system over any available network, such as GPRS or a WLAN access point.

Another important challenge associated with wireless body-area networks is safety and reliability, in particular, identification of the individual to which the networked sensors are attached. Philips Research is addressing this with its Active Digital Aura technology that allows sensors to automatically recognize the individual’s identity the instant they make contact. Extending existing RFID- and Near Field Communication (NFC)-based identification, Active Digital Aura deploys body-coupled communication for automatic patient and clinician identification. A tag, which can be easily built into something as small and unobtrusive as a wristband, provides electronic identification of the person being monitored, while advanced authentication mechanisms protect privacy and security. This gives the person as well as health-care professionals easy and secure access to medical devices and data, and also allows uncomplicated but safe configuring and association of wireless devices.

All these solutions are intended to increase quality and efficiency of care giving as well patient safety and reassurance.

The BASUMA open innovation partnership supports Philips’ ambitions of broadening the scope of monitoring towards out-of-hospital use and wireless-embedded biosensors. BASUMA partners are aiming at new chemical sensors for measuring lactate and ROS (reactive oxygen species) in respiratory air, which play in the future key roles in the development of asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which will also be integrated into the wireless body-sensor platform. Within this application context, Philips Research is also active in the development of invisible “Ambient Health Sensors” that can be integrated into, for example, a chair or a personal health area to continuously monitor medical condition and fitness (see Philips Research Press Release: “Philips demonstrates new Personal Healthcare techniques”, June 2005).

Moreover, BASUMA plans clinical trials for 2007 to validate the proposition that continuous monitoring at home provides better treatment of patients suffering from COPD and breast cancer, and better recovery after heart transplantation while also reducing costs of medical care.

For further information please contact:

Ellen de Vries
Philips Research
Tel.: +31 40 27 42321
Mobile: +31 6 53243037
Email: ellen.de.vries@philips.com