Final Project Proposal:  Wearable Patient Monitoring System for Preventative and Diagnostic Monitoring

For my final project, I was inspired by the topic of using embedded technologies for portable patient and remote monitoring systems. In developing countries, it is difficult to provide adequate monitoring services as hospitals are understaffed and monitoring systems are expensive and not cost-effective. I propose to develop a portable, cheap wearable device with low-power processing and sensing capabilities that can monitor vital patient signs (EKG, temperature, movement, etc) in order to take the place of direct human monitoring. In the event that a patient's vital signs indicate am emergency, the device can sound an alarm to alert medical staff. The device could also record the patient's vital signs, which would be valuable medical data that doctors could download and analyse (via a pda or computer from a server). An exciting possibility would be to use the device for preventative monitoring. We can build up simple profiles for vital signs and their correlations to medical events (a EKG profile for heart attacks, or temperature profile for getting a fever). These profiles could then be programmed into the devices such that they would trigger alarms when they occur so that doctors can do preventative treatments on symptoms instead of having to deal with more complicated and potentially life-threatening conditions.