A wearable, multimodal, vitals acquisition unit for intelligent field triage

This paper describes the design and development of a unique, body-worn vitals monitor that is able to acquire ECG, blood oxygen, body temperature and up to eight custom designed electronic stethoscopes for highly synchronized heart and lung sound auscultation. The proposed platform is a key component required for developing a Field Accident and Emergency Center Intelligent Monitoring System to acquire vital patient information and optimize medical resource allocation in overwhelming environments. The proposed platform also has enabled the collection of a novel highly synchronized data-set that is useful for research purposes in the field of emergency vital sign analysis. The design is unique in that it is the only known wearable platform that, in addition to a multitude of standard vital signals, also wirelessly transmits eight multichannel auscultatory streams to central nodes, i.e. to a local ambulance or to the nearest hospital.