Monitoring patient respiration and posture using human symbiosis system

This paper proposes a function for monitoring a patient´s respiration and posture in sleep using a human symbiosis system in a sickroom. The novel features of the system function lie in noninvasive and unrestrained monitoring to ensure the symbiosis with the human. Noninvasive monitoring eliminates the need for monitoring needles or catheters to invade the patient´s body; sensors thus do not impose a physiological burden such as pain on the patient. In unrestrained monitoring, sensors and their electrical cords do not limit degrees of freedom of the patient´s movement. Unrestrained sensing therefore does not impose a psychological burden caused by the limitations on the patient. A “robotic bed”, which is a system to realize the functions stated above, is a bed-shaped system with 221 pressure sensors for monitoring the patient´s respiration and posture without preventing doctors and nurses from performing their tasks. The sensors are set 5 cm from each other on the bed and surround the patient. Experiments to monitor respiration and posture in sleep demonstrate that the proposed function is feasible for monitoring for over 6 hours