Sensory baby vest for the monitoring of infants

Abstract

Continuous monitoring of physiological parameters is very often necessary for the evaluation of health conditions, diagnostic reasons and the detection of life or health threatening events. For infants, especially, who cannot provide any feedback about discomfort or health complaints it is an important issue to collect objective data under everyday conditions. The demand of physicians for the development of monitoring and diagnostic systems which are easier to handle and less obtrusive than the commonly used medical systems was the motivation for the presented project. Another motivation was the concern frequently expressed by parents about the danger of apparently life threatening events (ALTE) or even the problems of sudden infants death syndrome (SIDS). The developed sensory baby vest includes fully integrated sensors for the parameters respiration, heart rate, temperature and humidity, to detect excessive sweating, for the continuous monitoring of infants under clinical and home conditions. It will allow the early detection of potential life threatening events calling for rescue as well as the recognition of the development or progression of diseases at an early stage. Health protection or even life-saving thus will be enabled in time. A variety of principles for the measurement of the parameters has been assessed for the integration into garments. Prototypes have been manufactured incorporating the chosen sensing principles with textile and textile-compatible technologies. Currently, the prototypes are clinically tested for durability, handling and signal quality.