Wireless Patient Monitoring

Cheap, wireless paperbased sensors with build-in batteries will soon invade our environment and revolutionize lifestye and behavior of patients, doctors and care givers.

At the iPack Center at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm Sweden, researchers develop core technologies for heterogeneous integration of bio-medical sensors, energy supplies, computing and wireless communications on fiber-based packaging and paper-boards, for innovative products such as smart bio-paper, intelligent pharmaceutical packaging and storage, intelligent patient monitoring devices.

Wearable Patient Monitoring Sensors
Today, patient monitoring devices are often wired, at least from the sensor to the data recorder device that the patient wears. These wires can be removed by integrating sensors, a radio link, and an integrated battery on a small piece of thick paper. This will significantly improve the quality of healthcare monitoring whether the patient stays in hospital or stays at home. The information will be collected by a station located in the room or in the hand-held device, and this information sent to doctors or nurses via communication networks. Although devices like pacemakers are meant to be durable, many monitoring devices need to be refreshed at least every two days. Cost therefore must be low. This becomes possible with advanced ultra low-cost, low power CMOS radio links, printed battery cells, and various low cost sensors. Typical monitoring devices could be for example, respiration monitoring, wound bandage monitoring, electrocardiography, and electroencephalography.

The iPack Centre is one of 15 “VINNOVA Centres of Excellence” established within Sweden during 2007 with joint long-term financing (10 years) by industry, society, academia and VINNOVA (Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems).