Freescale Develops Telemonitoring System to Run Health Screenings at Home

Freescale Semiconductor and Pounce Consulting have jointly developed a user-friendly portable telemonitoring reference design that enables physicians and patients to perform routine health screenings remotely or at home.

Known as the Intelligent Hospital kiosk, this is a principal example of Freescale’s efforts for reducing health care expenses and enhancing patient care by triggering innovation and facilitating medical device makers to benefit from the newest available technology.

Patients will be able to utilize this kiosk in their homes for transmitting their medical tests and personal vital signs remotely to a provider of healthcare for proactive monitoring and prevention of acute complications due to chronic degenerative diseases. The kiosk can also be installed in public locations for individuals who want to conduct various tests and send the data to hospitals.The recently launched Flexis MM portfolio is able to drive nine different medical devices using the reference design, to reduce noise interference and analog costs. Such devices include a spirometer for measuring air flow and lung volumes, a weight scale, a blood glucose meter, an ultrasonic height sensor, a thermometer, a blood pressure monitor, a heart rate monitor, a pulse oximeter, and a one-lead electrocardiography EKG.

The kiosk incorporates a touch-sensing interface for toggling between different operation modes thereby creating a cutting edge experience for the user and making the contact surfaces clean for disinfection.  A magnetic card reader is able to identify patient data that is sent through ZigBee or USB to a server or a PC for storing an electronic medical record (EMR).

During a current utilizing this Intelligent Hospital kiosk, a physician was able to conduct the complete screening in seven minutes for a patient on the average for 67 patients for diagnosis of health conditions that the initial screening could not detect.