Personal monitoring apparatus
Patent No. US11877821 (titled "Personal monitoring apparatus") on Jun 11, 2019. The application was issued on Jan 23, 2024.
What is this patent about?
’821 is related to the field of wearable health monitoring and personal emergency response systems. It specifically addresses the technical challenge of providing continuous, unobtrusive medical supervision for elderly or disabled individuals, integrating multi-modal sensing and long-range communication capabilities into a compact form factor suitable for daily wear.
The underlying idea behind ’821 is the integration of a multi-protocol wireless architecture within a single wrist-worn device to bridge the gap between local physiological sensing and remote medical intervention. By combining short-range data links with satellite positioning and motion analysis, the system creates a comprehensive digital agent capable of distinguishing between normal rest and emergency events like falls or cardiovascular distress.
The claims of ’821 focus on a dual-transceiver wrist-worn housing that utilizes a Bluetooth® link for voice communication via a cellular phone while employing a second, distinct wireless protocol for data transmission. The hardware includes a GPS receiver, an accelerometer, and a heart rate sensor, all powered by a battery that is replenished via inductive coupling circuitry.
In practice, the device functions as a sophisticated sleep and activity tracker that calculates sleep duration and body orientation by fusing data from the heart rate sensor and accelerometer. This implementation allows the processor to generate a baseline of daily living patterns, which is then used to identify deviations that might indicate a health crisis or a dangerous change in physical condition.
This invention differentiates itself from prior approaches by enabling voice-over-cellular relay directly from the wrist, ensuring the user can communicate with caregivers even if they cannot reach a handset. Furthermore, the use of inductive charging eliminates the need for physical ports, enhancing the device's durability and ease of use for individuals with limited manual dexterity.
How does this patent fit in bigger picture?
Technical Landscape
In the mid-2000s when ’821 was filed, home health monitoring for elderly or disabled populations was typically implemented using sporadic in-person nursing visits or basic emergency pull-cords that required manual activation. At a time when medical data collection commonly relied on discrete, periodic measurements taken at diagnostic facilities rather than continuous remote streaming, hardware and software constraints made the real-time classification of complex human motion non-trivial. Furthermore, local area networking in residential environments was often limited to point-to-point wired connections or basic wireless protocols, making the integration of diverse environmental and physiological sensors into a cohesive, self-healing monitoring fabric a significant engineering challenge.
Prosecution Position
The disclosed invention represents a meaningful technical advancement through the architectural integration of a wireless mesh network with automated motion classification and physiological monitoring. By utilizing a digital monitoring agent—such as a Hidden Markov Model or neural network—to classify sequences of motions into groups of similar postures represented by models, the system enables the autonomous identification of dangerous conditions like falls without requiring manual user intervention. This architectural shift from reactive, button-press emergency systems to a proactive, multi-node sensing environment overcomes the technical constraint of monitoring mobile subjects in an unobtrusive yet continuous manner. The integration of bioimpedance, acoustic, and accelerometry data over a mesh topology enables a comprehensive remote diagnostic capability that achieves the technical effect of real-time behavioral and medical trend analysis.
Claims
The patent contains a total of 7 claims, with claim 1 serving as the sole independent claim. This independent claim focuses on a wearable monitoring apparatus equipped with dual wireless transceivers, a GPS receiver, an accelerometer, a heart rate sensor, and inductive charging capabilities, specifically configured to compute sleep metrics and facilitate telephone calls via a cellular device. The dependent claims serve to add specific hardware components and functional refinements, such as an orientation sensor, audio interfaces, a touch-screen display for data visualization, and the specification of Wi-Fi as a secondary communication protocol.
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US11877821
- Application Number
- US16438194A
- Filing Date
- Jun 11, 2019
- Publication Date
- Jan 23, 2024
- External Links
- Slate, USPTO , Google Patents