Non-invasive systems for out-of-clinic monitoring of biomechanical measures

The ability to more continuously record out-of-clinic data is a critical component in the progress from the current hospital-centered healthcare system, which will continue to be stressed by the growing aging population, to one that is preventative and pervasive. In order to achieve this healthcare model, the development of robust acquisition systems which can be used in daily life for recording biomechanical measures is crucial. Chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis and cardiovascular disease affect a large portion of aging adults and pose an immense financial burden on healthcare. Joint acoustics have been assessed in proof of concept studies as a potentially significant, non-invasive biomarker which can be continuously tracked using low cost systems for diagnosis and monitoring of osteoarthritis. In order to monitor knee joint acoustics in a continuous, out-of-clinic setting during complex movement, an untethered wearable system is developed. An ultra-low noise analog front end is developed to ensure high quality output in the created wearable system. Blood pressure is a known risk factor for all cardiovascular disease, but current out-of-clinic methods require the use of an occlusive cuff which are bulky and cause discomfort. To improve user compliance, and provide a method of cuffless blood pressure estimation, weighing scale and watch based systems are developed to extract pulse transit time which has a strong inverse correlation with changes in blood pressure.M.S