Public Health and Critical Event Surveillance Through Wearable Devices: Can It Be Done?
How my kid’s RSV infection and then wake turbulence on a plane gave me an idea… And I’m betting I’m not the only one who thought of it.
When my child was born, we decided to buy a sock with an embedded heart rate monitor and oxygen sensor. We were those paranoid parents who work in healthcare and public health, and have heard too many horror stories about things like Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or accidental suffocation. The little sock-like device fit around her tiny foot and sent a continuous stream of data to a base unit. In turn, the base unit would feed the data to algorithms that would alert us if the kid’s heart rate or oxygen levels dropped.
This is how the accompanying app for the sock showed her information to us when she was healthy:
As you can see, she slept through most of the night, with a little movement close to waking up, and then lots of movement once she woke up. Her average oxygen level was 100%, and her average heart rate while sleeping was 109 beats per minute.
