Method for addressing medical conditions through a wearable health monitor with the aid of a digital computer

摘要

Individuals who suffer from certain kinds of medical conditions, particularly conditions that only sporadically exhibit measurable symptoms, can feel helpless in their attempts to secure access to medical care because, at least in part, they are left to the mercy of their condition to present symptoms at the right time to allow diagnosis and treatment. Providing these individuals with ambulatory extended-wear health monitors that record ECG and physiology, preferably available over-the-counter and without health insurance preauthorization, is a first step towards addressing their needs. In addition, these individuals need a way to gain entry into the health care system once a medically-actionable medical condition has been identified. Here, the ECG and physiology is downloaded and evaluated post-monitoring against medical diagnostic criteria. Medical specialists are pre-identified and paired up with key diagnostic findings, such that an individual whose monitoring data indicates a medical concern will be automatically referred and treated.

主权项

1. A health monitoring apparatus for addressing medical conditions with the aid of a digital computer, comprising:
a wearable health monitor comprising:
a disposable extended wear electrode patch comprising:
a flexible backing comprising stretchable material defined as an elongated strip with a narrow longitudinal midsection, each end of the flexible backing comprising an adhesive contact surface adapted to serve as a crimp relief;a plurality of electrocardiographic electrodes comprised on the contact surface of each end of the flexible backing and provided to sense a patient's physiology over a monitoring period, each electrocardiographic electrode conductively exposed for dermal adhesion and adapted to be positioned axially along the midline of the sternum for capturing action potential propagation;a non-conductive receptacle affixed to a non-contacting surface of the flexible backing and comprising an electro mechanical docking interface; anda pair of flexible circuit traces affixed at each end of the flexible backing with each circuit trace connecting one of the electrocardiographic electrodes to the docking interface, at least one of the circuit traces adapted to extend along the narrow longitudinal midsection to serve as a strain relief; anda monitor recorder capable of recording the physiology throughout the monitoring period, comprising:
a sealed housing adapted to be removably secured into the non-conductive receptacle; andelectronic circuitry comprised within the sealed housing and comprising an external interface configured to be removably connected to the electrocardiographic electrodes via the docking interface comprising:
an externally-powered microcontroller operable to execute under micro programmable control through firmware that is stored in a program memory unit of the microcontroller;an electrocardiographic front end circuit electrically interfaced to a microcontroller and operable to sense electrocardiographic signals through the electrocardiographic electrodes; andan externally-powered flash memory electrically interfaced with the microcontroller and operable to store samples of the electrocardiographic signals collected during the execution of the monitoring sequence; a download station comprising an interface over which the physiology can be downloaded from the onboard memory of the wearable heath monitor upon completion of the monitoring period; and a computer adapted to be interfaced to the download station, comprising:
a database, comprising:
the physiology as retrieved from the download station; anda medical diagnostic criteria;a processor and a memory configured to store code executable by the processor and comprising:
a comparison module configured to compare the physiology to the medical diagnostic criteria and to generate a diagnostic overread that comprises one or more diagnostic findings; anda referral module configured to determine the severity of any medical condition indicated by the diagnostic findings and to refer the patient to one or more pre-identified care providers via the computer for facilitated diagnosis as conditioned upon the severity of each such medical condition that exceeds a threshold tolerance level.