Portable Life and Activity Monitor Records Vital Signs

A wearable, noninvasive electronic device monitors vital signs such as heart rate and respiration while at the same time recording a person's activity level.

Developed at Oregon State University (OSU; Corvallis, USA), the OSU Life and Activity Monitor (OLAM) incorporates both a noncontact heart rate sensor and a 5-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU), allowing simultaneous heart, respiration, and movement monitoring without requiring physical contact with the skin. The device is intended to be used in clinical trials for weeks at a time with no physician intervention, providing continuous noninvasive monitoring. The data is downloaded to an integrated SD card, allowing long-term observation of a patient’s physical activity and subtle longitudinal changes for biomedical research and diagnostic purposes.


By combining motion data with heart-rate information, OLAM enables assessment of actual physical activity beyond conventional movement sensors, enabling the filtering of movement artifacts generated by the noncontact capacitive interface, and using the IMU data as a movement noise channel. The device is designed to provide doctors and clinicians a continuous flow of data over time, reducing the need for frequent office visits, and ultimately providing better care at lower cost. The study describing OLAM was presented at the annual international conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), held during January 2012 in Boston (MA, USA).

“When this technology becomes more miniaturized and so low-cost that it could almost be disposable, it will see more widespread adoption,” said study presenter Patrick Chiang, PhD, an OSU assistant professor of computer engineering. “It's already been used in one clinical research study on the effects of micronutrients on aging, and monitoring of this type should have an important future role in medicine.”

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