Electronic Health Care Coach

摘要

An Electronic Health Care Coach is provided for patients that have trouble taking their medications or remembering to test for such things as blood sugar and the like. The Electronic Health Care Coach provides voice prompts to the patient to determine compliance with dosing of medications or routine testing. The Electronic Health Care Coach takes the form of a stuffed toy such as a teddy bear and utilizes input sensors that are contained by an appendage of the stuffed toy that are sensitive to human touch. Multiple prompts are employed depending on the responses received. Statistics on patient compliance are collected. The stuffed toy and related voice prompts and input sensors provide a friendly and easy to use reminder system for medications and routine testing that creates a positive experience for the patient, thus increasing patient compliance.

主权项

1. An electronic health care coach comprising:
a first input sensor that provides a first binary signal upon sensing actuation; a second input sensor that provides a second binary signal upon sensing actuation; a microprocessor configured to provide digitally encoded voice prompts and react to the binary input signals from the first input sensor and the second input sensor by providing further digitally encoded voice prompts dependent on the state of the binary input signals from the first input sensor and the second input sensor; a decoder player for converting the digitally encoded voice prompts to an analog audio signal; an acoustic speaker electrically connected to the decoder player; an energy storage device to provide electrical power to the microprocessor; computer memory electrically coupled to the microprocessor for storing digitally encoded voice prompts and response logic; and a stuffed toy containing the microprocessor, decoder player, energy storage device, speaker, input sensors and computer memory.