Challenges of Wearable Health Monitors : A Case study of Foetal ECG Monitor

Abstract

IoT-based wearable health monitoring devices promise multiple benefits such as remote diagnosis, early-warnings, continuous home-care monitoring etc. These technologies will potentially impact people's quality-of-life while reducing costs to healthcare service providers. The challenges for the development of these technologies are manifold, particularly for monitoring bio-signals. In this paper, we discuss the challenges associated with wearable health monitors through a case study of a fetal ECG wearable garment. This is focused on three main areas: a) sensor design and signal conditioning, b) data processing, and communications and c) printed sensors integrated into IoT garments. We discuss in detail the current design challenges to be tackled for achieving a precise signal retrieval.

Machine Learning for Healthcare Wearable Devices: The Big Picture

“…However, according to Bluetooth 5 specification, the Bluetooth protocol allows up to 7 devices' simultaneous connections to a device and practically performance degrades and pairing problems arise when there are multiple connections to a smartphone. Other factors that affect the choice of communication technology are the maximum distance between the wearable and the edge device, the required data rate for the wearable-to-edge device, and the required latency [ 142 ]. The intercommunications in the wearable model over the Internet run between the edge device and the remote service or directly between the wearable device and the remote service are two-way data communication channels over transmission control protocol (TCP) or user datagram protocol (UDP) at the transport layer with the Internet protocol (IP) at the network level.…”

Smart Healthcare for ECG Telemonitoring System

“…These sensors depend on conducting gel that presents many challenges, such as drying out, skin discomfort, dis-conditioning if not carefully placed. These concerns consider wet electrode systems unsuitable for use outside the clinical environment and especially unsuitable for remote wearable clinical ECG monitoring [76]. The development of alternative techniques, such as capacitive sensing-based dry electrodes.…”