Skin-surface-coupled personal health monitoring system

A prototype personal wearable health monitoring system is proposed and demonstrated. The system employs two silicone-coated MEMS pressure sensors for detecting blood pressure waveforms through skin surface contact in a noninvasive and continuous manner. The two sensors are placed at two adjacent measurement points of the body, for example the wrist or the neck, to measure blood pressure waveforms simultaneously. The measured waveforms are recorded by a data acquisition unit for signal processing and analysis. Analyzing the two waveforms can obtain the delay time between them, thus determining the local pulse wave velocity (PWV). The PWV and detailed blood pressure waveforms are critical for monitoring human health conditions. The prototype personal wearable monitoring system demonstrated its capability of detecting PWV of approximately 5.9 m/s at the wrist and 5.1 m/s at the neck.