TUT
Department of Electronics
Projects - Puhvi

Kankaanpää Unit - Projects

Wearable well-being project


  • Work done: January 2006 - December 2007
  • Project team, Kankaanpää Unit: Tapio Karinsalo, Aki Halme, Manu Myry, Pekka Iso-Ketola
  • Extent of work: total 110 person months, Kankaanpää Unit 44 person months
  • Co-operation with Tampere University of technology; Rauma Unit, Ragnar Granit Institute and Institute of Measurement and Information Technology.
  • Funding: TEKES, Clothing Plus, Oras, Hospital District of Satakunta, Satakunta telephone company and Suunto Ltd.
  • Results: Working prototype of wearable HipGuard system.
  • Contact: Tapio Karinsalo (project manager)

Wearable well-being project was established to research possibilities of applying wearable technology in healthcare and well-being. Final goal of the project was make one restricted sector of healthcare more effective by using means of wearable technology. Such means are, for example, long-term unobtrusive and user friendly patient monitoring, new wireless network technology and decentralized services and integration. As a result of project a HipGuard - concept was composed and is based on interviews with healthcare professionals.

HipGuard is wearable measurement system for patients recovering from hip replacement operation. The system is meant to be used in home environment during the recovery period, which normally varies from eight to 12 weeks. At that time it is very important to use and load the operated hip, and leg in right manner. Thus using the operated leg speeds up the recovery process by gaining back the normal muscle strength. HipGuard - unit monitors the movement and posture of patient and provides warnings when limits set by doctor are about to be exceeded. System also monitors the stress applied on the operated leg by means of capacitive weight measurement.

The wearable part of system consists of central unit and seven pose - sensors. Sensor nodes are located in carefully selected places in specially made pair of pants. Weight measurement sensor node is located in special made shoe, where flexible circuit board based insole replaces the original one. Each of pose - sensor node contains three - axis accelerometer and two - axis magnetic sensor which can be used also as compass. As a test purposes three of nodes and weight measurement unit work wirelessly, utilizing short range personal area network called ANT. The central unit also includes another wireless technology, bluetooth, which implements the link from wearable part of the system to the "outside world". In practice this outgoing link may be established with a Bluetooth enabled smartphone or Bluetooth equipped home PC. Primary task of central unit, in addition to network management, is taking care of payload data received from sensor nodes. Central unit is also capable to perform small scale data processing which can be used to reduce amount of data to be delivered forward.

Usage of system is made as easy as possible. Central unit contains only three push buttons for control and three light emitting diodes to inform end - user of possibly occurred events. The control unit can alert the user by an audio signal (peep) or a haptic vibration. More versatile user interface can be found from smartphone. This special made software can, for example, be used to show occurred events in numerical mode, set the limits of hip positions and to decide which of possible warning systems are used. Smartphone is also capable connect internet through wireless area network and collected event information can be sent to server. Thus health care professionals are able to analyze results with appropriate server application.

Links:

Publications:

  • Iso-Ketola, P., Karinsalo, T. & Vanhala, J. HipGuard: A wearable measurement system for patients recovering from a hip operation. PervasiveHealth 2008, 2nd International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare. Tampere, Finland, Jan 29 - Feb 01 2008. 4 p.

Updated , Myry Manu