Medical sensor measures ECG wirelessly
Finnish medical device manufacturer, Movesense has developed a compact and lightweight wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) sensor for remote patient monitoring and telehealth applications. The Movesense Medical sensor can provide customisable measurements for remote healthcare monitoring
It uses Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52832 SoC to transmit medical data to the user’s smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy (LE). The sensor is registered as a Class IIa device under the 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.
The Movesense Medical provides ECG, heart rate, heart rate variability and movement data via the integrated nine-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU). Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52832 SoC supervises the Movesense firmware stack and records the sensor data using its 64MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with floating point unit. This data is then transmitted via Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity to the wearer’s smartphone.
The nRF52832 SoC has been engineered to minimise power consumption with features such as the 2.4 GHz radio’s 5.5 mA peak RX/TX currents and a fully-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 sensor can be integrated into existing health applications or used to develop new wearable health solutions that improve patient outcome and save costs, said Jussi Kaasinen, CEO and founder at Movesense. “It also enables health operators and researchers running clinical trials the ability to access medically certified raw data,” he said.
The Movesense Showcase app (available for iOS) can be used to test hardware functionality including ECG registration at various sampling rates, heart rate and heart rate variability 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, the Movesense Medical sensor can function for up to seven days assuming continuous real time ECG streaming at a 256Hz sample rate. Depending on the use case and amount of data being transmitted, the device can function for up to several weeks before the battery needs to be replaced.
