Movesense has introduced a compact and lightweight wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor for remote patient monitoring and telehealth applications. The ‘Movesense Medical’ sensor is registered as a class IIa device under European Union (EU) Medical Device Regulation (MDR), and is designed for use by remote healthcare providers, medical device manufacturers and integrators, hospitals, or by companies developing their own commercialised medical device.
Movesense medical provides ECG, heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), and movement data via integrated nine-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU). It employs Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52832 SoC (system on chip) to supervise Movesense firmware stack and record sensor data using its 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU). This data is then transmitted via bluetooth LE wireless connectivity to wearer’s smartphone.
“Movesense Medical sensor is a ready-to-go solution for medtech innovators as it can be integrated into existing health applications or used to develop new wearable health solutions that improve patient outcome and save costs. It also enables health operators and researchers running clinical trials the ability to access medically certified raw data.” says Jussi Kaasinen, CEO and founder at Movesense.
Movesense showcase app (available for iOS) (iphone operating system) can be used to test hardware functionality including ECG registration at various sampling rates, HR and HRV recording, and sensor signal collection at various dynamic ranges. The app source code and sample apps are also available to developers to use as a starting point for their own projects and to accelerate product development.
Using a CR2025 coin cell battery, Movesense Medical sensor can function for up to seven days assuming continuous real time ECG streaming at a 256 Hz sample rate. Depending on use case and amount of data being transmitted, device can function for up to several weeks before battery needs to be replaced. The ultra low power consumption is thanks in part to nRF52832 SoC, which has been engineered to minimise power consumption with features such as 2.4 GHz radio’s 5.5 mA peak RX/TX (receiver) (transmitter) currents and an automatic power management system.
“Battery life optimisation is crucial to this application, to ensure the wearer’s medical data is collected and transmitted with no gaps. The ultra low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC helped make this possible. We also selected the chip due to the wide range of available hardware building blocks, and the generous 256/512 KB Flash memory and 32/64 KB RAM. In addition, Nordic provided us with access to excellent technical information, reference designs and brilliant application engineers.” adds Kaasinen.
Comment on this article below or via Twitter: @IoTNow_OR @jcIoTnow
