Remote personal health monitoring with radio waves

We present several techniques utilizing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology for personal health monitoring. One technique involves using RFID sensors external to the human body, while another technique uses both internal and external RFID sensors. Simultaneous monitoring of many patients in a hospital setting can also be done using networks of RFID sensors. All the monitoring are done wirelessly, either continuously or periodically in any interval, in which the sensors collect information on human parts such as the lungs or heart and transmit this information to a router, PC or PDA device connected to the internet, from which patient's condition can be diagnosed and viewed by authorized medical professionals in remote locations. Instantaneous information allows medical professionals to intervene properly and timely to prevent possible catastrophic effects to patients. The continuously monitored information provides medical professionals more complete and long-term studies of patients. All of these result in not only enhancement of the health treatment quality but also significant reduction of medical expenditure. These techniques demonstrate that health monitoring of patients can be done wirelessly at any time and any place without interfering with the patients' normal activities. Implementing the RFID technology would not only help reduce the enormous and significantly growing medical costs in the U.S.A., but also help improve the health treatment capability as well as enhance the understanding of long-term personal health and illness.