Smarter, Healthier Sleeping

From THE FUTURIST, July-August 2008, Volume 42, Number 4

By Rick Docksai

Technology monitors your heart health while you sleep.

A patient can rest more peacefully knowing that sensors in the smartBed’s biomedical bedsheet are monitoring his quality of sleep. The information that the sensors collect will feed into a computer that creates personalized recommendations for sleeping better.

ECG electrodes sewn into the fabric of this undergarment will help with early detection — and prevention — of heart failure.

You usually need to go to a doctor’s office for a doctor to treat you. But if one international research project is successful, you might not even have to get out of bed.

Devices under development by the Heart Cycle ­project, a European Union–sponsored initiative involving 18 European and Chinese research teams, would monitor heart disease patients’ vital signs via sensors fitting inside sheets, blankets, and pajamas.

According to Royal Philips Electronics, one of the participating organizations, these devices could “enable people to fight cardiovascular diseases within their own home.”

Test models include the smartBed, a pressure-sensitive bedsheet that would record your heart rate and respiration while you sleep and calculate sleep quality. In the morning, you could read on a PDA screen how well you slept and get recommendations for sleeping better.

“It can help you stay fit, and it can improve the quality of life for people with heart disease,” according to Philips.

Doctors can conduct sleep studies today, but they need the patient to sleep overnight in a clinic and be fitted head to foot with very conspicuous wires and straps. The smartBed works at home and requires nothing more than an electrode-laced bedsheet.

A patient would likewise feel no discomfort from the “heart failure management solution,” a garment fitted with textile ECG electrodes, a blood pressure cuff, and a weight scale that are all wirelessly connected to a PDA device.

The garment would monitor a patient’s breathing and heart rate and beam the information to a lab. The lab could beam back therapies and lifestyle recommendations for the patient to read on the PDA screen.

These monitoring systems might thus let doctors catch and treat any irregularities before they morph into heart attacks.

“Predicting decompensations [when a heart valve is too weakened by oxygen deprivation to pump enough blood to body tissues] in time can enable appropriate change in medication, avoiding expensive hospitalizations and increasing both the life expectancy and quality of life of the patient,” the company states.

About the Author: Rick Docksai is an editorial assistant for THE FUTURIST.

For more information, contact: Philips Research, www.research.philips.com.