Systems for remote monitoring of indoor air quality and respiration of wheelchair users

Pulmonary function is reduced in people with impaired mobility. Remotely, unobtrusive respiratory function monitoring can reduce cost and enhance healthcare quality, safety and efficiency for people with motor activity impairments. The paper describes two systems for remote monitoring of respiratory function and indoor air quality: a mobile wearable solution based on EMFi sensing technology, and a wheelchair embedded solution based on microwave Doppler radar technology. The air quality monitoring is performed using solid state sensors for temperature and relative humidity. The systems use Bluetooth compatible smart sensing nodes that deliver the information to a smart phone running an Android operating system (OS) that is used as graphical user interface and as a data bridge between the sensing nodes and an advanced data processing server. Preliminary results on reliability test of the two systems for respiratory function monitoring are presented. Good sensibility and efficiency of radar system in detecting respiratory rate offer opportunity to unobtrusively and remote monitoring of the respiratory function of wheelchair users.