BioSigMA - Bio Signal Monitoring Application

Abstract

The aging of the population causes an increased prevalence of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (which is the leading cause of death in developed countries) and dementia. Because of the high morbidity and mortality rates associated with this group of diseases, it is necessary to continuously monitor the vital signs of people at risk. Nowadays this monitoring is carried out by a Holter monitor, which acquires electrocardiogram data for a long period of time, so that it can be analyzed later. However, this is not a real-time monitoring. There is another type of monitor, which stores the data and communicates with a remote server, allowing realtime continuous monitoring. The latter system requires a specific platform and, as result, the patients have to adapt to yet another device in their daily activities. Information and communication technologies (ICT) have had a remarkable role in the management of health care distribution and social work, and can be applied on daily monitoring of patients, providing a timely opportunity for medical staff to intervene. In the ICT field we have witnessed the rise of smartphones as a gadget with great mobility, connectivity and processing capacities. They are the ideal device to take patient monitoring to the next level, replacing the need for specific platforms for each type of monitoring, and facilitating the daily lives of patients. This ability of smartphones becomes more and more apparent with the increasing number in new medical applications that profit from its characteristics. Therefore, our goal is to create an application for smartphones which takes advantage of the portability and processing capacities of smartphones to assess cardiac function, using bio signals captured by a device with bluetooth interface and the sensors on the smartphone, and subsequent processing with a medical telemetry system.