MHealth and thought control.

First came the joystick. Then came the motion-sensing Wii remote. What´s next? Sensors and mobiles are opening up a new world: thought control.

Co-founded by Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist and former University of Cambridge research fellow, Emotiv says its EPOC headset features 16 sensors that push against the player’s scalp to measure electrical activity in the brain – a process known as electro-encephalography. In theory, this allows the player to spin, push, pull, and lift objects on a computer monitor, simply by thinking. “There will be a convergence of gesture-based technology and the brain as a new interface – the Holy Grail is the mind” says Snyder.

Last month the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), an arm of the US Defence Department, said it had awarded a $6.7 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop “brainwave binoculars”. The binoculars use scalp-mounted sensors to detect objects the user might have seen but not noticed – in other words, the computer is used as a kind of brain-aid, giving the user superhuman vision.

Explaining the technology, Dr Robert Shin, an assistant professor of neurology and ophthalmology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said: “There is a level where the brain can identify things before it ever makes it to the conscious level. Your brain says, ‘it may be something’, but it might not realize that it is something that should rise to the conscious level.”

Another defence contractor, Honeywell, has been working on a similar technology known as “augmented cognition” to help intelligence analysts to operate more effectively. Based on the same principle as the binoculars, it has been shown to make analysts work up to seven times faster. It can also detect when they are getting tired. In other tests, soldiers have been kitted out with headsets that detect “brain overload”, allowing commanders to know if they can process new information under the extreme pressures of the battlefield.

mHealth and Motion capturing.

Motion capture, or Mocap, is a technique for digitally recording movement. Are we playing games her? Originally used as an analysis tool for biomechanics, mocap is now successfully employed in a wide variety of sectors including mHealth related applications.

Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.

Realtime data from mocap enables the diagnosis of problems or enhancement of performance in the arenas of biomechanics and sports. It can also assist in the design of products or buildings when applied to the field of engineering or ergonomics. Animazoo distinguishes three types of Mocap´s.

Gyroscopic systems use tiny inertial gyroscopes that are attached to a body. These directly record the rotations of the body parts. The rotational data is transmitted by radio to a receiver unit where it is mapped instantly to a skeleton in order that the data can be visualized in realtime. These systems perform with no lag in realtime, producing incredibly accurate data. The data retains nuance even with fast moves.

Mechanical systems track body joint angles directly and are often referred to as exo-skeleton mocap systems, due to the way the sensors are attached to the body. A person attaches the skeletal-like structure to their body and as they move so do the articulated mechanical parts, measuring the performer’s relative motion. Mechanical motion capture systems are realtime, relatively low-cost and usually wireless. Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.

Optical systems triangulate the 3D position of a marker between one, two or more cameras that have been pre-calibrated for distance to provide overlapping projections. Tracking a large number of markers or multiple performers is accomplished by the adding more cameras. These systems can be expensive to buy, require technical expertise to operate and are studio based. They have a relatively small capture area and can suffer from occlusion as well as being complicated to set up. Magnetic and electrical interference makes these systems highly susceptible to error, they also require extensive data cleaning and technical expertise to operate plus they suffer from limited area of use and lag for realtime use.

Magnetic systems calculate position and orientation by measuring the relative magnetic flux of three orthogonal coils on both the transmitter and each receiver. Magnetic systems require only two-thirds the number of markers compared to optical systems. One drawback is that the markers are susceptible to magnetic and electrical interference from metal objects in the environment and electrical sources. Magnetic and electrical interference makes these systems highly susceptible to error, they also require extensive data cleaning and technical expertise to operate plus they suffer from limited area of use and lag for realtime use.

MHealth secures hygiene in hospitals.

Experts say nearly 2 million hospital-acquired infections occur each year, resulting in about 5,000 deaths and more than 90,000 illnesses in the US. Research shows that simple hand washing by medical staff could cut the number of infections in half. But what if your rushing to the next patient? There is now a wireless, credit-card-sized sensor that can detect whether health care workers have properly washed their hands upon entering a patient’s room.

The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center was chosen as a study site because of its higher-than-average rate of hand hygiene compliance, nearly twice the national average. The sensor is worn like a name badge and is programmed to detect the presence of ethyl alcohol, the most common ingredient in hand cleansing solutions used in hospitals.
When a health care worker enters a patient’s room, a small, wall-mounted sensor sends a signal to the badge to check for the presence of alcohol. The worker places their hands near the badge to obtain a reading. Lights on the badge glow red if no alcohol is present, indicating the need to wash hands. A green light indicates alcohol is present.

“Health care workers don’t deliberately avoid washing their hands; they get distracted or are so busy moving from one thing to the next they don’t remember to do it,” said Mike Edmond, M.D., chief hospital epidemiologist. “Until now, the only way we’ve been able to track hand washing habits is through direct observation. This new system continuously monitors and records data and serves as a constant reminder.”

The hand hygiene program is part of an aggressive environmental and patient safety campaign at the VCU Medical Center called Safety First, Every Day. The goal of the campaign is to make the medical center the safest health care institution in the country with no events of preventable harm to patients, employees and visitors. The device was developed by BioVigil, LLC.

MHealth muscles tests more accurate.

Doctors test the strenght of intrinsic hand muscles by letting the patient pull an push at their hand and fingers. Is this an accurate methode? No, a team of bioengineering students from Rice University developed a device to measure thenar, hypothenar, interosseus and lumbrical muscles.

Graduates Caterina Kaffes, Matthew Miller, Neel Shah and Shuai “Steve” Xu invented PRIME, or Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator, for their senior project. “Twenty percent of all ER admissions are hand-related. Neuromuscular disorders like spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis-all these diseases affect the intrinsic hand muscles,” said Xu. PRIME, was created to replace the common test. The real goal is to quantify finger/muscle strength for a more accurate diagnosis for carpal tunnel syndrome evaluation and other disorders.

“U.S. surgeons perform over 500,000 procedures for carpal tunnel each year. $2 billion per year is spent treating this disease but up to 20 percent of all surgeries need to be redone. Our invention can be used across the spectrum of care from diagnosis to outcome measurements,” said Xu.

The device has three elements: a pegboard restraint, a force transducer enclosure and a PDA custom-programmed to capture measurements. In a five-minute test, a doctor uses pegs to isolate a patient’s individual fingers. “You wouldn’t think it works as well as it does, but once you are pegged in, you can’t move anything but the finger we want you to,” Miller said. A loop is fitted around the finger, and when the patient moves it, the amount of force generated is measured. “PRIME gets the peak force,” Xu said. “Then the doctor can create a patient-specific file with all your information, time-stamped, and record every single measurement.”

Sensing textiles as part of your Mobile Body Area Network system.

Sensoring your body while doing everything you are used to do. Is this possible? Comfortable smart clothes that monitor the wearer’s heart, breathing and body temperature promise to revolutionise healthcare by allowing patients to lead there normal lives.

Unlike many remote health monitoring systems that rely on sensors strapped to users’ arms or chests connected by wires to bulky equipment, a Greece team from the Sotiria General Chest Diseases Hospital in Athens, has embedded sensing devices directly into textiles, creating garments that are not only smart but also comfortable and practical to wear. Data from the biosignals collected by the clothes is then sent via a mobile connection to caregivers, allowing doctors to check up on their patients and warning if their health deteriorates.

Whereas other remote monitoring systems require different sensors linked to different transmission devices, the HealthWear system collects all the information from the sensors into a single device called a Portable Patient Unit (PPU). The embedded sensors include a six-lead electrocardiograph (ECG), respiration movement, pulse rate and skin temperature monitors, in addition to an external oximeter to measure blood oxygen saturation and a 3D accelerometer inside the PPU to measure body position. The data are then transmitted via a secure GPRS mobile connection to a central server.

“The information is stored on a patient’s electronic health record and can be accessed via a secure TCP/IP internet connection by doctors and caregivers, in either near real-time or off-line mode,” explains Alexis Milsis, a research engineer at the Sotiria e-Health Unit.

Caregivers, meanwhile, can easily access patients’ data, allowing them to visualise the patients’ progress accurately over time and even monitor their data in real time. This feature allows doctors to perform remote checkups by speaking with the patient via a videophone and instructing them to perform different exercises while they monitor their ECG and oximetry readings.

Cyclists turn into mHealth-stations.

Mobile Health is concerned with your wellbeing. There are many programs monitoring the state of your physical body. But what about prehealth-care? Cyclists and pedestrians will become mobile pollution detectors in an initiative launched by Imperial College London.

Teams of cyclists and pedestrians are wearing sensors to measure air and noise pollution in four British cities. These mobile data collectors will help government-backed researchers pinpoint “pollution hot spots” and develop new policies for managing air quality.

The pocket-sized sensors can detect up to five different types of vehicle emissions at a time, then transmit data to Imperial College London via mobile phone. Imperial College researchers will track measurements and sensor movement on Google maps. Additional sensors mounted on traffic signals and street lamps will help the researchers make 3-D models of pollution clouds to determine if traffic signal patterns have an effect on air quality.

The three-year project, called Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across Grid Environments, or MESSAGE, involves 100 mobile and stationary sensors in Gateshead, Cambridge and Leicester, England, as well as the South Kensington district of London.

mHealth keeps them rolling.

Toyota announced that they have developed a thought-controlled wheelchair.  Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Is the automotive industry coming to the health sector? Everything that’s rolling looks interesting now. See one of my last post.

Both companies continue to invest in innovation, science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. The story of why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now is their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.

The BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute, has succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds (one millisecond, or ms, is equal to 1/1000 seconds.

Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. R&D under consideration includes increasing the number of commands given and developing more efficient dry electrodes. So far the research has centered on brain waves related to imaginary hand and foot control. However, through further measurement and analysis it is anticipated that this system may be applied to other types of brain waves generated by various mental states and emotions.

Fall detection integrated in your body-area network.

Sensoring your condition and your balance. Not new so why the mentioning? This one is integrated in a wireless body-area network (WBAN).

Halo Monitoring is a Huntsville, AL based company, that is marketing a wearable monitoring strap that can detect falls. This is one of the leading causes of hospitalization and accident-related deaths among senior citizens. Halo Monitoring is demonstrating its myHalo system at the Healthcare Unbound conference in Seattle this week.

The user wears a washable strap with electrodes embedded in the fabric to measure heart rate, skin temperature, calorie expenditure, sleep patterns and other factors critical to the health of frail, elderly people, and is able to detect whether the wearer has fallen or is simply lying down. It transmits readings via the ZigBee standard for wireless devices, to a home “gateway” that looks like a standard wireless Internet router. The gateway connects via an existing ethernet or a standard phone line to Halo’s monitoring center, which can send immediate web, email and text alerts to concerned caregivers, or, in emergency cases, a call-center operator can contact the caregiver directly or dial 911. “If Mom doesn’t answer the phone, you can log onto our website,” President and CEO Chris Otto says.

Monitoring is automatic, so the user doesn’t have to press a panic button. The Halo system costs $65 to $99 a month, and is currently in use only in the Huntsville area, as well as in Chicago and New Jersey, where the company has marketing partners. Expect a national rollout next year, according to Otto.

Here it comes: the thought-controlled homebased healthcare system.

Homeautomation is setting huge steps forward. Control with your mobile is already in place. More healthcare sensoring will be connected. What will the future bring? Scientists in London are close to perfecting a smart home system that is controlled by the user’s thoughts.

In addition to my postings last week, the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) uses electrodes attached to the scalp that allow the user to turn lights off and on, change the channel on the TV or open a door “by just thinking about it,” according to Science Daily.

g.tec, an Austrian medical engineering company, developed the (BCI) to assist the disabled. But it could have applications for the general population. g.tec teamed up with a group of international universities and research institutes as part of the EU-funded Presenccia project to incorporate its BCI technology into virtual environments. As part of the project a fully functioning smart home was created in virtual reality (VR).

“It has a kitchen, bathroom, living room… everything a normal home would have. People are able to move through it just by thinking about where they wanted to go,” Guger says. Being able to move and control objects in virtual reality solely by the power of thought could offer new and liberating possibilities for people with physical disabilities.

The electrodes are similar to the ones used by doctors for an Electroencephalogram (EEG). According to Science Daily, the BCI learns to identify the “distinctive patterns of neuronal activity produced when they imagine walking forwards, flicking on a light switch or turning up the radio.

Realtime mhealth monitoring slowly forward.

Begin this year there was a boost of mobile health applications and devices with some kind of sensoring. What progress is there? One of the area’s is the integration of different measurements and feedback. The Personal Health Monitor provides personalised, intelligent, non-intrusive, realtime health monitoring using wireless sensors and a mobile phone.

The wireless sensors can be either attached to the users body (for example ECG and Accelerometer) or can be external devices, such as a Blood Pressure Monitor or Weight Scale, that are used when required.

On the phone, the Personal Health Monitor software analyses, in real-time, the data received from the sensors, such as an electrocardiogram (ECG). The phone gives immediate feedback and personalised advice to the user based on the analysis of sensor data collected.

The windows-mobile application is a development of the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia and free to download. The system can also be used as a flexible Cardiac Rhythm Monitoring (CRM) system. It’s different from conventional Holter and Event monitor systems since it is not limited to just recording ECG arrhythmias but offers a range of other functionalities, that make it a personal health monitoring system for people that need to make life style changes such as lose weight or monitor their blood glucose level. The application can detect and record various arrhythmias and can react to serious arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation/tachycardia. The ECG signal quality is in the majority of cases of sufficient quality for a cardiologist to make an assessment.

Using 3G, or any other Internet connection available on the mobile phone, the data collected is transmitted to the Health Care data server where it becomes available for viewing and further analysis by qualified specialists. The broad range of features show the way in patient centred healthcare.