The present invention relates to an information collecting apparatus for collecting physiological parameters and its method, and more particularly to an information collecting apparatus for collecting physiological parameters and its method capable of monitoring the user's health condition, and selecting the most appropriate time to take actions and provide appropriate medical treatments for the user.
As medical science is well developed, medical services and hygiene are enhanced, and the world's average fertility rate is dropped gradually, our health condition and average life expectancy are improved significantly, and thus our population tends to be an ageing population. In the ageing population, related issues of the medical services and social welfares for ageing and chronic diseases arise. To cope with this trend and satisfy the patient requirement for healthcare service at home, the market demand of healthcare and remote homecare for elderly people and patients becomes increasingly higher.
In recent years, information technology keeps advancing, the applications of remote homecare and medical service become more diversified, and many developed countries aggressively conduct researches and promotions on remote homecare and medical service to solve the problems caused by the elderly population. These activities not only help medical institutes including hospitals or clinics to achieve the purposes of sharing resources and saving costs, but also effectively promote homecare and medical services to remote districts with insufficient medical resources.
In general, the so-called “remote homecare” or “remote medical service” connects a patient and a family, or a patient and a doctor at two different places and transmits information such as a patient's physiological parameters (including blood pressure, heartbeat or blood sugar level) to a family or a doctor through the Internet or telephone network technology, so as to compile and save the information as the patient's physiological parameter history data and determine the patient's condition to provide timely homecare or medical service when the patient is unwell or in a critical condition. Thus, remote homecare or remote medical services can overcome the limitations of time and space by shifting the medical treatment activities originally conducted in hospitals or clinics to the patient's home.
To create a good remote homecare or remote medical service system, it is desirable to create a remote homecare or remote medical service software that integrates texts, data, figures, images, sounds, audio/video contents, in addition to converting medial information in an electronic form and transmitting the information via a fast broadband telecommunication network. The invested research fund and manpower are huge, and thus the cost of using a remote homecare or remote medical service system remains very high and unaffordable by ordinary people. What is more, traditional remote homecare or remote medical service systems still have the following two drawbacks:
Firstly, the aforementioned systems are constructed between a patient and a doctor (or a patient and a family member) at two different fixed locations, and thus once if the patient leaves his/her location, the system will no longer be unable to monitor the patient's physiological conditions and will result in a large psychological burden to the patient. The patient dares not to leave the fixed location and is seemingly imprisoned at the place. As a result, the patient's health will be affected adversely, particularly for chronic disease patients.
Secondly, the patient's physiological parameters obtained by the monitoring system are sent and stored at the location of a specific doctor, hospital or clinic, such that if a patient falls ill in another district, the patient's personal history data of the related physiological parameters will not be available easily, and thus will delay the timing of the medical treatments or even may cause unredeemable regrets.
Therefore, it is an important subject for researchers and manufacturers to make improvements by finding a way of using an existing low-price broadband network and a low equipment cost to design an information collecting apparatus for collecting physiological parameters to achieve the purpose of remote homecare or remote medical services, such that a patient can have absolute decision making and control on the patient's physiological parameters and can record and save the history data of the physiological parameters into an external storage device.
In view of the foregoing shortcomings of the prior art, the inventor of the present invention based on years of experience to conduct extensive researches and experiments, and finally developed and designed an information collecting apparatus for collecting physiological parameters and its method in accordance with the present invention, in hope of using this innovative idea to contribute to the general public.
Therefore, it is a primary objective of the present invention to provide a method for collecting physiological parameters, and the method is applied in an information collecting apparatus, such that when the information collecting apparatus receives a user's physiological parameter and determines that the physiological parameter does fall within a range of a monitoring limit value registered in the information collecting apparatus, then the information collecting apparatus will send a notice to a management server, so that the personnel, organization or department at the management server will assist monitoring the user's health condition, and select the most appropriate time to take actions and provide appropriate medical treatments to the user.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide an information collecting apparatus for collecting physiological parameter, which comprises a first signal transceiver unit, a monitoring unit, a processing unit and a second signal transceiver unit, wherein the first signal transceiver unit is used to receive a wireless signal and analyze a physiological parameter from the wireless signal, the monitoring unit comprises at least one monitoring limit value each corresponding to a physiological parameter, and the processing unit is connected to the first signal transceiver unit and the monitoring unit and searches for the monitoring limit value corresponding to the physiological parameter. When the processing unit determines that the physiological parameter does not fall within the range of the corresponding monitoring limit value, the second signal transceiver unit will send a notice to a remote management server, so that the personnel, organization or department of the management server is able to monitor the user's health condition and select the most appropriate time to take actions and provide appropriate medical treatments to the user.
To make it easier for our examiner to understand the objective, technical characteristics and effects of the present invention, preferred embodiments will be described with accompanying drawings as follows:
Referring to
Referring to
A plurality of monitoring limit values are pre-installed in the monitoring unit 40, and each monitoring limit value is set according to a physiological parameter of a user 2, and a physiological parameter of each user 2 is sent from the same or different portable detecting instruments 1 to the information collecting apparatus 4 via the same or different wireless transmitter modules 3 for monitoring various physiological parameters of a specific user 2, and each monitoring limit value corresponds to a specific identification code and a specific instrument number, and the combination of an identification code and an instrument number corresponding to the monitoring limit value is the same as the combination of a source identification code and a source instrument number. In addition, each monitoring limit value can be set by the user 2. For instance, a normal heartbeat is 60˜100 times per minute, and the monitoring limit value can be set to 60˜100 times per minute by the user, or the processing unit averages the physiological parameters of each physiological information table in a predetermined time period and multiplies the result by a risk parameter for computing the monitoring limit value and storing the monitoring limit value into the monitoring unit 40. Further, the notice unit 48 includes a location data (such as an IP address) of at least one management server 5, and each location data corresponds to a source identification code, and the information collecting apparatus 4 processes a procedure (as shown in
Step (301): receiving a wireless signal;
Step (302): analyzing the wireless signal by a first signal transceiver unit 43 to determine whether or not the wireless signal carries a physiological parameter of a user 2, a source instrument number and a source identification code; if yes, then go to Step (303), or else go to Step (310);
Step (303): sending the physiological parameter, source instrument number and source identification code to the processing unit 42, if the wireless signal carries the physiological parameter, source instrument number and source identification code;
Step (304): finding a monitoring limit value in the monitoring unit 40 based on the source instrument number and source identification code by the processing unit 42, and the instrument number and identification code corresponding to the monitoring limit value are the same as the source instrument number and source identification code;
Step (305): determining whether or not a physiological parameter falls within a range of the monitoring limit value by the processing unit 42; if yes, then go to Step (306), or else go to Step (308);
Step (306): finding a physiological information table in the storage unit 46 by the processing unit 42, and the instrument number and identification code corresponding to the physiological information table are the same as the source instrument number and source identification code;
Step (307): writing the physiological parameter into the found physiological information table, and ending the procedure;
Step (308): indicating the physiological parameter as an abnormal physiological condition if the processing unit 42 determines that the physiological parameter does not fall within a range of the monitoring limit value, and then producing a warning signal, and finding a location data corresponding to the source identification code from the notice unit 48;
Step (309): producing a notice by the processing unit 42 based on the warning signal, source identification code and device identification code, and sending the notice to the second signal transceiver unit 44, and sending the notice by the second signal transceiver unit 44 to a management server 5 corresponding to the location data, and then going to Step (306);
The wireless transmitter module 3 further includes an emergency button 30 (as shown in
Step (310): analyzing the wireless signal by the first signal transceiver unit 43 to determine whether or not the wireless signal carries an emergency code and a source identification code; if yes, then go to Step (311), or else go to Step (313);
Step (311): finding a location area corresponding to the source identification code from the notice unit 48 based on the source identification code by the processing unit 42 and finding a corresponding location data;
Step (312): producing another notice based on the emergency code, source identification code and device identification code by the processing unit 42 and sending the other notice to the second signal transceiver unit 44, and sending the other notice to a management server 5 corresponding to the location data by the second signal transceiver unit 44, and ending the procedure.
In the foregoing method, a user 2 can press the emergency button 30 when the user feels unwell, or the sensor detects an instant abnormal movement of the user 2, and then the information collecting apparatus 4 will issue another notice to the management server 5 to notice a computer 61 of a related organization 6 on the management database registered by the user 2 or a telephone (or mobile phone) 71 (as shown in
Step (313): discarding the wireless signal if the wireless signal does not carry an emergency code and a source identification code, and then ending the procedure.
The information collecting apparatus 4 can receive different physiological parameters of each user 2 and write the physiological parameters into different physiological information tables. If the management server 5 (such as a management server) receives a notice from the information collecting apparatus 4, a precaution reporting mechanism will be started, and a contact data (such as an email address or a telephone number) of a related organization 6 (such as a hospital or a doctor) or a family member 7 of the user 2 corresponding to a source identification code will be registered by the user 2 in a management database of the management server 5, and the location (such as the user's home) of the corresponding device identification code registered in the management database will be sent by an email or a voice mail via the Internet 8 or a telephone network 9 (as shown in
In the present invention, the information collecting apparatus 4 further process the following procedure:
The processing unit 42 receives a plug-in signal, and the plug-in signal notices the information collecting apparatus 4 that an external storage device A (such as a flash disk) as shown in
Referring to
In an information collecting apparatus of the invention, the first signal transceiver unit 43 will send the emergency code to the processing unit 42 if the first signal transceiver unit 43 decodes a wireless signal and the wireless signal carries an emergency code and source identification code, and then the processing unit 42 will find a location data corresponding to the source identification code based on the source identification code and produce another notice based on the emergency code, source identification code and device identification code and send the other notice to the second signal transceiver unit 44, and the second signal transceiver unit 44 will send the other notice to a management server 5 corresponding to the location data.
In an information collecting apparatus of the invention, the information collecting apparatus 4 further includes a storage unit 46 for storing at least one physiological information table, and each physiological information table has an instrument number and an identification code, and writes in a physiological parameter. If the processing unit 42 obtains the physiological parameter, the processing unit 42 will find a physiological information table having an instrument number and an identification code identical to the source instrument number and source identification code from the storage unit 46, and will write the physiological parameter into the found physiological information table.
In an information collecting apparatus of the invention, the information collecting apparatus 4 further includes a connecting portion 41 for installing an external storage device A (such as a flash disk), such that if the connecting portion 41 is installed to the external storage device A, the information collecting apparatus 4 will store all physiological information tables of the storage unit 46 into the external storage device A.
Since the present invention adopts an information collecting apparatus 4 to collect various physiological parameters of different users 2 and writes the physiological parameters into different physiological information tables, a user can carry the external storage device A containing the physiological information tables to a hospital or a clinic when the user 2 seeks for medical advices or treatments. After the hospital or clinic reads the physiological information tables, a diagnosis can be preformed for the user 2 immediately to avoid a delay of the timing for the medical treatments. If the physiological parameter does not fall within a range of the monitoring limit value, or the wireless signal carrying the emergency code is received, the information collecting apparatus 4 will send out the notice signal, so that the personnel, organization or department at the management server 5 can monitor the health condition of the user 2 and select the most appropriate time to take actions and provide appropriate medical treatments to the user 2. The user 2 also can personally set the monitoring limit value in the monitoring unit 40, so that the user 2 can have absolute decision making and control on the information collecting apparatus 4 to back up, edit and use the information as needed for emergency situations.
While the invention herein disclosed has been described by means of specific embodiments, numerous modifications and variations could be made thereto by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention set forth in the claims.