Bertrand Massot

A wearable, low-power, health-monitoring instrumentation based on a programmable system-on-chip TM

Improvement in quality and efficiency of health and medicine, at home and in hospital, has become of paramount importance. The solution of this problem would require the continuous monitoring of several key patient parameters, including the assessment of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity using non-invasive sensors, providing information for emotional, sensorial, cognitive and physiological analysis of the patient. Recent advances in embedded systems, microelectronics, sensors and wireless networking enable the design of wearable systems capable of such advanced health monitoring. The subject of this article is an ambulatory system comprising a small wrist device connected to several sensors for the detection of the autonomic nervous system activity. It affords monitoring of skin resistance, skin temperature and heart activity. It is also capable of recording the data on a removable media or sending it to computer via a wireless communication. The wrist device is based on a Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoCTM) from Cypress: PSoCs are mixed-signal arrays, with dynamic, configurable digital and analogical blocks and an 8-bit Microcontroller unit (MCU) core on a single chip. In this paper we present first of all the hardware and software architecture of the device, and then results obtained from initial experiments.

EmoSense: An Ambulatory Device for the Assessment of ANS Activity—Application in the Objective Evaluation of Stress With the Blind

Analysis of autonomic nervous system activity is a subject of increasing interest in the fields of health care and handicap management, as it provides information on the emotional, sensorial, and cognitive states of the patient. In this context, the simultaneous measurement of several physiological signals using small, discreet, mobile devices is required, in order to unobtrusively obtain such information under real-life conditions. We have therefore developed an ambulatory device which enables the measurement of heart rate, electrodermal activity, and skin temperature with noninvasive sensors. Wireless communication and local data storage on a memory card enables the device to be used during in-situ experiments for the analysis of autonomic nervous system activity. We have used this instrumentation in a study for the objective evaluation of stress in the blind when walking in urban space, through the analysis of electrodermal activity of blind pedestrians who independently followed a charted course involving a range of urban conditions. Experimenting in real-life settings has lead to the definition of novel, more pertinent parameters for the analysis of physiological signals in the study of autonomic nervous system activity. Results from these experiments have identified, for the first time, some rather surprising obstacles or events which give rise to an increased stress for the blind. These results were very encouraging for the use of such ambulatory devices for experiments under real- life conditions.

Biomedical Sensors for Ambient Assisted Living

The percentage of the population classified as being elderly has been predicted to increase dramatically in size over the next 30-40 years. Figures produced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) anticipate an increase from around 600 million in the year 2000 to close to 2 billion by the year 20501. By 2050, 22% of the world’s population will be over 602 in Europe it will be over 30%3. In addition, according to the WHO, approximately 10% of the population experience some form of disability. Already 21% of people above the age of 50 have severe vision, hearing and/or mobility problems.

Wearable sensor systems: The challenges

Given the soaring costs associated with the treatment of ever more prevalent chronic disease, it is widely agreed that a revolution is required in health care provision. It is often thought that the necessary technology already exists for the home-based monitoring of such patients and that it is other factors which are holding back the more widespread clinical uptake of these new tools. The authors suggest that the necessary sensor-related technologies are often not as advanced as may first appear; certainly they are generally not adequate for the robust, long-term monitoring of patients under real-life conditions. An additional problem is the evident efforts to apply a given sensor and related technology platform to any and all monitoring scenarios without sufficient consideration of patient needs and the clinical requirements. The authors review the key sensing platforms and suggest the applications for which they are best suited.

Thermal parameters measurement on fire fighter: Improvement of the monitoring system

Real time monitoring of the thermal parameters on firefighter when operating is one of the ProeTEX project goals. The newly developed equipments in the framework of this project, integrate one temperature sensor and one heat flux sensor in the rescuers outer garment. The environment in which firefighters operate is dangerous and the thermal risks can occur everywhere. Consequently the heat flux is so not necessarily symmetrical. To improve the thermally at risk situation detection, a modified platinum sensors array was integrated in the jacket in order to monitor simultaneously heat flux and temperature surrounding the rescuer. The sensors were placed in the most exposed area (shoulders and chest) to monitor thermal parameter in different directions. The heat flux is calculated from the temperature difference. This sensors array enables the detection of temperature increases and heat flux even when the heat source is localized on one side.

Objective evaluation of stress with the blind by the monitoring of autonomic nervous system activity

Accessibility for the blind in an urban space must be studied under real conditions in their daily environment. A new approach for evaluating the impact of environmental conditions on blind pedestrians is the objective measure of stress by the monitoring of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity. Original techniques of data analysis and spatial representation are proposed for the detection of the ANS activity through the assessment of the electrodermal activity. Skin resistance was recorded with an EmoSense system on 10 blind subjects who followed a charted course independently. The course was 1065 meters long and consisted of various environmental conditions in an urban space. The spatial frequency of the non-specific skin resistance responses was used to provide a more relevant representation of geographic hotspots. Results of statistical analysis based on this new parameter are discussed to conclude on phenomena causing mental stress with the blind moving in an urban space.

Brain Temperature & Autonomic Nervous System for the study of relaxation

Cerebral temperature and autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity are relevant complementary parameters for the monitoring of physical and mental activities. At the moment, no study has been performed combining these thermal and neurophysiological parameters.

QoS-Driven Self-adaptation for Critical IoT-Based Systems

The Internet-of-Things, which designates the interconnection of numerous physical devices, is a growing research direction faced with many challenges. One of these challenges is to provide constant quality-of-service despite IoT devices being used in a constantly changing physical environment. In order to answer this problem, we introduce a quality-of-service driven self-adaptation framework, which can simultaneously handle changing adaptation strategies, monitoring infrastructure and physical environment while guaranteeing constant quality-of-service. Because of its formal guarantees, our system is particularly suited for the control of critical IoT-based systems, and we thus demonstrated its practicality by applying it to an e-health case-study where the safety of the monitored patients must be assured.

From health smart homes to Living Labs for Health

Introducing ICT in hour homes bring hopes and challenges in transforming our living place into a connected place allowing new services to be invented for comfort, security, wellness and health services to fragile or elderly people. But these developments must be guided by experimentations with end users, in dedicated and controlled environments such as the Living Labs for Health.