An automated monitoring system for home health care has been designed for an experimental house in Japan called the Welfare Techno House (WTH). Automated electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements can be taken while in bed, in the bathtub, and on the toilet, without the subject's awareness, and without using body surface electrodes. In order to evaluate this automated health monitoring system, overnight measurements were performed to monitor health status during the daily lives of both young and elderly subjects.

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For the purpose of health care monitoring during daily life, we attempted to devise a non-conscious monitoring system, set up in a lavatory, for the automatic acquisition of body weight, weight of urine and feces, together with ballistocardiogram as an index of cardiac function during relieving nature. The system consists of (i) a weight measuring platform(WMP) in which 4 load sensors were installed, and (ii) a data processing, displaying & storing(PDS) unit. The platform was placed on the floor adjacent to a toilet bowl, and also supported the toilet seat so that the total body weight could be detected by the load sensors even in either case of standing or sitting on the seat. The prototype WMP had a weight resolution of about 5 gf, and thus those data could be accurately determined in an automatic manner with an appropriate processing. This paper describes an outline of the system, its performance and examples of measuring results, and a possible evaluation of cardiac function obtained from the ballistocardiogram is also discussed.

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A new plethysmograph, the electric impedance cuff, was designed for the indirect measurement of blood pressure, volume elastic modulus Ev and compliance Ca in human limb arteries. This comprises a compression chamber filled with electrolyte solution and a tetrapolar electric impedance plethysmograph whose electrodes are placed inside the chamber; the former for controlling transmural arterial pressure Pt, and the latter for detecting total limb volume Vo, mean arterial volume Va and its variation delta Va. Systolic and mean arterial pressure in the upper arms, forearms and fingers were measured by detecting pulsatile impedance variation during the gradual (3-5 mm Hg per heart beat) increase (or decrease) in chamber pressure by the volume oscillometric technique. Diastolic and pulse pressure delta P were calculated from these pressure values. Compliance Ca = delta V/delta P and volume elastic modulus Ev = delta P/(delta Va/Va) were recorded at various Pt levels, controlled by the compression pressure. Although this is a kind of impedance plethysmograph, the volume change in a limb segment can be detected by this method without passing electric current through the limb.