North Carolina Patent of the Month – November 2020
In the age of technology, wearable devices like fitbits and apple watches are becoming increasingly popular. These gadgets are used by all sorts of people from athletes and personal trainers to your average Joe. While they’re useful to see your daily steps or calories, they typically only monitor a small subset of data. And, they don’t take into account environmental factors that might influence you, so they’re not very useful for medical intervention. But traditional health monitors, like Ag/AgCl electrodes or inflatable blood pressure cuffs, tend to be bulky and uncomfortable to wear, not like the watch-style ones available to the public. To accommodate the growing need for wearable medical monitors, Valencell Inc. has developed an audio device with biometric sensors to collect accurate environmental and physiological data.
Valencell’s earpiece has the ability to collect information that surpasses that of current wearable monitors. Its sensors measure body temperature, skin temperature, blood gas levels, muscle tension, heart rate, and blood flow, as well as environmental factors such as humidity, climate, traffic, UV radiation, vapors and/or fumes, etc. So, it knows not to alert you of a high heart rate just because you’re walking up stairs on a hot day. But it’ll help many people if there’s something seriously wrong. This information is wirelessly transmitted to a remote device, where it can be reviewed by medical professionals for improved healthcare interventions.
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