Saturday, February 22, 2014
Startup Quanttus is developing a device that monitors heart rate, respiration and blood pressure in your wrist.
Many delivery tracking gadgets shaped and related applications can tell you how many steps you've taken today or roughly how many calories you have burned. Get deeper ideas, as the way in which your body is recovering from yesterday's training, is much trickier.
A startup called Quanttus, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hopes to offer this knowledge with a chip - look like gadget that continuously monitors heart rate, respiration and blood pressure, which are difficult to measure accurately with a device worn on the wrist. The plan is to use this data to provide information and even predictions on your health. It is not only collect a large amount of data, but also the application of algorithms to give meaning to these data. The hope is that the gadget might help people to monitor existing disease or show them how their work habits are affecting their health.
"We build, basically, a hardware platform; a laptop that sits on your wrist,"said Quanttus co-founder and CEO Shahid Azim. "But then, there is an equally great effort around how make sense, how to generate ideas based on the results."
The technology behind Quanttus comes the Microsystem Technology Labs at MIT; the device, which is in the first phase of prototype, not yet a date of exit, price or even a name. But since September, the company conducts studies validation at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and women's Hospital in Boston, comparing the measurements of the prototype of three vital signs against measurements with traditional tools. Azim said the first results are "very promising" and the company is likely to offer a beta version of its product to developers this year so that they can start creating applications for it.
The prototype used in the tests resembles a digital watch with no face. There is a square plate topped with components (battery and a green LED bright are more easily recognizable) in a housing frosted, held in place by four screws. It is centered on a large, Black Watch band, rubbery appearance.
The device will eventually include a screen which can give immediate feedback, showing the data such that the resting heart rate and calories burned. It will send data to your phone via Bluetooth, so it can go a Quanttus remote service for prior analysis deeper ideas are fed to the phone. This is similar way of working of the Nike Fuelband and jaw upwards, while Quanttus says it can do much more accurately than existing portable gadgets, whose settings often vary for an equivalent when used at the same time the part of monitoring (see "Fitness Trackers still need to work out Kinks"). The company believes that this will allow him to glean more nuanced and accurate details of your health.
Tracks vital signs mainly via ballistocardiogram bracelet, which measure the small movements of the body caused by the pumping of the heart - something said Azim highlights the overall performance of your cardiac system, but it is difficult to measure accurately with a portable gadget discreet. An optical sensor on the back of the bracelet shines light on your wrist and measure the selective absorption of light as a means to determine your heart rate, while an accelerometer measures the tiny body movements that result. Signals of blood pressure and respiration are extracted from these data.
Steve Jungmann, who directs the management of the company's products, said that the device could also work with your smartphone so that it can take account of external factors that could affect your body, like the weather, location, and pollen.
Jungmann said that a triathlete could use the device when she wakes up to see if it is ready to go on a run or swim or if she needs to back off for a while. This could be determined by combining the variability of heart rate and other measures in a sort of recovery partition. For the average person, he said, the Quanttus device may give your comments like "we see you sleep poorly. Here are the elements that have led you sleep wrong during several different nights. »
Remote analyses of society will rely, in part, on machine learning. But it is still far away. Jungmann always uses a test device that collects data on removable memory cards, it transmits to scientific Quanttus for consideration and discussion. He kept a diary of his daily activities in a smartphone application that match by with the data it collects from his body. And even if Quanttus subsequently turns out to be useful, wrist-worn steps of the company probably don't will be as reliable as measures of clinical vital signs.
Emil Jovanov, associate professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, which followed continuous physiological studies, said a less invasive problem signs vital surveillance is the 'noise' which occurs when the person wearing the monitor is in motion, making it unreliable readings signal.
And it is "extremely difficult," said Santosh Kumar, an associate professor at the University of Memphis research also includes monitoring of vital signs, to measure clinically accurate vital signs to the wrist because of its remoteness from the heart. "It will be useful for recreation? Yes. It will be clinically useful? This is what is difficult,"he said.
View the original article here
