What does Home Security Have to do with Healthcare?

By Annie Blanco


GE says their motion sensors used for home security to catch a thief have been incorporated into an innovative, intelligent wireless medical sensing platform. The new platform announced and created by GE Global Research, could dramatically improve neonatal and home patient monitoring.

Here’s how the platform was created - GE researchers developed sophisticated signal processing algorithms for a wireless sensor that can classify different types of motion and closely monitor a person's breathing and heart rate. This type of sensor could have advantages in monitoring premature babies in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Premature infants have very sensitive and fragile skin, which can make it difficult to directly attach sensors to them. GE's new sensor could wirelessly monitor an infant's movements, including breathing and heart rate.
Similarly, this sensor could be installed in a home for elder care or other outpatient monitoring.

Jeffrey Ashe, an electrical engineer at GE Global Research said, “We have essentially built a more sophisticated brain for an existing GE sensor that can tell whether someone is moving or motionless and whether an individual is breathing or not breathing. One of the most promising applications of this new technology could be in neonatal infant health monitoring. We have seen considerable interest from the medical community in having this type of wireless sensing capability to monitor the well-being of infants under intensive care.”

Ashe, added, similar to a home security medical alert system, “GE’s sensing technology could enable new applications in elder and outpatient care as well by enabling remote monitoring of the health and well-being of a patient and loved one.”