Method and device for sleep analysis

What is this patent about?

’118 is related to the field of remote sleep diagnostics and physiological monitoring. Traditionally, sleep studies require patients to visit specialized laboratories where they are tethered to bulky equipment and monitored by on-site technicians. This process is often limited by facility capacity, high costs, and the difficulty of transporting immobile or acutely ill patients to a dedicated sleep center.

The underlying idea behind ’118 is the decentralization of sleep analysis through a portable, wireless acquisition system that enables clinical-grade monitoring in non-traditional settings like hospital rooms or nursing homes. By integrating multiple physiological sensors into a compact, battery-powered interface, the system allows for the continuous collection and transmission of data without restricting patient mobility or requiring expensive facility retrofitting.

The claims of ’118 focus on a specific hardware configuration and method for remote diagnosis involving a portable patient interface box equipped with integrated pressure transducers and a nonvolatile digital memory. The system specifically requires the simultaneous collection of airflow via a nasal cannula or mask, respiratory effort through a belt, oxygenation via a fingertip pulse oximeter, and body orientation using a kinetic sensor, all of which are digitized and stored locally before being transferred for professional analysis.

In practice, the invention functions by capturing high-fidelity respiratory and positional data while the patient remains in their own bed or a standard hospital room. The interface box utilizes a dual-port pressure transducer system to distinguish between nasal/oral airflow and thoracic effort, while an internal accelerometer tracks movement to identify sleep posture. This data is then moved to a database where a computer identifies specific physiological or technological events, such as oxygen desaturation or sensor displacement, to streamline the physician's review.

This approach differs from prior solutions by combining local nonvolatile buffering with the ability to transmit data to a remote lab for near-real-time evaluation. Unlike unattended home tests that often suffer from high failure rates due to lost signals or disconnected leads, this method allows remote technicians to verify data adequacy and communicate with the patient or caregiver to correct sensor issues during the study, ensuring a diagnostic-quality result without the need for a dedicated sleep lab environment.