Health and Wellness Monitoring Becomes Easy with Health Sensor Technology

The health sensor market is expected to grow in the coming years owing to the factors such as increasing demand for home healthcare settings, rising geriatric population and rising prevalence of chronic disorders. Healthcare experts also state that Health Sensors not only help in management of chronic diseases but also help in measuring the amount of drugs absorbed in the body.

Products such as hand-held diagnostic sensors, wearable sensors, implantable sensors are all accounted under the umbrella of health sensors. These sensors are helpful for wellness monitoring, patient admission triage, logistical tracking, chronic illness & at risk-monitoring, sensor therapeutics, in hospital clinical monitoring, and post-acute care monitoring.

Companies including Avago Technologies Ltd, Danaher Corporation, Medtronic Plc, GE Healthcare, and Honeywell International Inc, etc. are active in the health sensor market. These companies are working to make the technology more advanced and provide better results.

This week, CardieX Limited—a health and technology company—announced that its wearables co-development partner, Blumio, Inc, has entered into a significant partnership with a semiconductor company, Infineon Technologies AG (Infineon). The partnership is done for the development and commercialization of sensor technology based on Infineons's radar chip and Blumio's software and algorithms. Adrian Mikolajczack, Head of Infineon Silicon Valley Innovation Centre (SVIC), Power and Sensor Systems stated, "Bringing together Infineon's 60 GHz radar chipset and system understanding with Blumio's expertise in cardiovascular health monitoring in a more formal engagement lets both companies leverage their strengths to more rapidly bring the product to market."

Mostly, plethysmogram (PPG) sensors are the used on wearable devices. These are incorporated into a wide range of wearable devices produced by the leading technology companies such as Apple, Samsung, Fitbit, and many.

How hospitals can use sensors to fight novel coronavirus?

A major challenge in combating Covid-19 is controlling the spread of the virus within a hospital. Cross infection from patient-to-patient as well as patient-to-caregiver becomes a major concern. Quarantining patients provides limitations to patient-to-patient contact, but to control contact between caregivers and patients, technology-based solutions play vital role.

As per the announcement by VivaLNK, provider of connected healthcare solutions, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center (SPHCC) uses VivaLNK's continuous temperature sensor to combat the spread of coronavirus in China.

Working with VivaLNK solution partner, Yijing Health, the temperature sensor is applied onto the patient directly. This allows for real time and continuous monitoring of changes in patient’s body temperature. Then, providing a view of the patients, the data is sent electronically to a remote observation dashboard at the nursing station. So, instead of checking the patient temperature physically in few hours with a mercury thermometer, it can be monitored remotely and automatically. Thereby, this adoption allows limitation to patient-to-caregiver contact.

Health sensors are here to stay and provide intense monitoring systems for better care.