Supervise Triage & Organize Patients' care with Covid-19

In order to limit the spread of Covid-19 it is essential that certain measures are needed to alleviate the burden from public health structures, including reference hospitals. The most significant one is to reduce Emergency Department overcrowding, minimizing waiting time of suspicious incidents and increase in-hospital safety of healthcare staff.

1. Picture - Triage Use Case

Fever and shortness of breath are considered as two of the main symptoms of patients infected by Covid-19. Both symptoms can be objectively tracked by measuring vital signs, such as body temperature, breathing rate and/or oxygen saturation levels. Continuous monitoring of those vitals is not currently considered as an option offered by EDs at the moment, unless a patient is admitted to the ICU. Instead sporadic checks may occur depending on the availability of human resources (usually limited and under huge pressure). In addition, commercial medical devices might be used, however they are quite expensive and not easily portable, while more than one device is needed to provide the full spectrum of required vital signs. From the above, it is quite apparent that there is a need for easy-to-use, unobtrusive and low-cost devices that may be used at scale from ED units to perform efficient triage and in-hospital monitoring of their visitors.

2. Picture - Photoplethysmogram

S.T.O.P. Covid-19 team has designed and developed a wrist-wearable device, which is using advanced digital signal processing (PPG (Photoplethysmogram)) algorithms to continuously extract heart rate, blood oxygen saturation levels and body temperature. The wearable device has been already interconnected with Vida24ΤΜ platform owned by Vidavo, which is an integrated care solution, already in use by thousands of EU citizens. Vida24TM is a certified  CE0653 Class IIa medical software according to the EU Medical Devices Regulation (MDR 2017/745) and fully complies with GPDR requirements. The wrist-wearable device supports common communication protocols, such as BLE and Wi-Fi, thus being able to transfer processed data to other third-party systems and apps through an API.

3. Picture - Prototype Wearable

Our intention is to connect the wearable device with a user-friendly mobile app for healthcare workers in the EDs, through Vida24ΤΜ platform back-end. This mobile app will enable the continuous monitoring of vital signs and receipt of real-time notifications in case of patient adverse events (i.e. abnormal values or trends of one or more vital signs for a specific time window). Finally, it will allow the real-time tracking of patients within the ED spaces of interest using a real-time location system (RTLS) based on Wi-Fi fingerprinting.

The main scenario of using our solution is the EDs of reference hospitals for Covid-19, enabling continuous monitoring of vital signs and the real-time notification of ED staff in case of health deterioration. Real-time detection of of health deterioration will enable highlighting the most critical cases, thus reducing clinical decision-making and patient waiting time and allowing for more efficient triage. Finally, recorded vital signs might act as a complementary source of  information to the results of the clinical examination to make a final diagnosis of patients. 

What has been accomplished so far

So far the wearable device has been finalized in terms of hardware and industrial designing. In our pitch presentation you may see the final product design and casing. Additionally, digital signal processing algorithms of PPG signal have been developed in order to extract heart rate, blood oxygen saturation levels and temperature. A service for uploading those measurements is already in place as well. Wearable device autonomous function may last up to ten (10) hours of continuous data communication, while current firmware version supports in addition inductive charging. Size of the device is 55mm X 46mm X 17mm and weighs 90g, including battery and wrist strap.

What else is needed for the solution to become available at a productive level;

  • Mobile app development
  • Development of breathing rate detection algorithm
  • CE certification. All individual hardware components including sensor, microprocessor and external casing are already CE certified, which in fact enables overall shorter certification time for the device.

4. Picture - Mockups Mobile App

Vidavo logo

Medical Phycics Laboratory, Medical School, AUTH

Attachments: