Heart-checking bed offers new frontiers in medicine technology

Rise in the incidence of heart failure among patients has become a matter of concern among health care providers as failure to provide timely care can become life threatening. Health care providers face another problem with patients with cardiac problem. Sudden bodily discomfort unrelated to chances of an imminent heart failure force hospitalization of patients that could have easily been avoided, saving the scarce medical and nursing resources that could be affectively used elsewhere. To resolve these problems the 'MyHeart' initiative, a project funded by European Union and carried out by the electronics multinational company, Philips, is set to develop a futuristic bed fitted with sensors to track the patient’s health and send the correct signals to doctors via telephone or the internet.

heartbeat monitoring bed

The bed would include an electronic weight scale, blood pressure monitor and sensors to measure heart rate, breathing rate and body movement while sleeping. In addition, patients will be provided with a vest with woven-in electrodes to provide ECG reading. All the information will be analyzed on a PDA and according to the urgency of the information, the results will be sent to doctors. Besides monitoring conditions of cardiac patients, this device can also prove to be useful in studying patients with disturbed sleeping patterns.

Source: Technovelgy