Patent Application
20080012716
While the current solutions are certainly helpful in many situations, they do not protect individuals in many sleeping situations, and are not easily adaptable for travel or sleep away from the specialized equipment. These devices are often prohibitively expensive to many in need, due to their specialized nature, high component count, and low productions volumes. In addition, many impairments and sleep situations make them ineffective.
Millions of public and private buildings including hospitals, hotels, and private homes have installed the strobe alerting devices that are not effective at awakening at-risk populations (such as the hearing impaired). As studies are introduced showing alarm methods with greater effectiveness (Bruck, NFPA Conference, Jun. 3, 2007: “Waking effectiveness of auditory, visual and tactile alarms”), there is a need for a solution that can ‘retrofit’ those installations without total replacement of the system or its components. There is also a need for technologies that can be produced with small size and affordable cost to meet the needs of the at-risk populations.
The present invention comprises an alert system that detects strobe light patterns produced by alarm signaling devices, such as those that comply with UL 1971 or other signaling regulations. Upon detecting such a strobe pattern, the system generates an output that is capable of alerting an individual who might not otherwise respond to the alarm condition, such as an individual who is asleep, hearing impaired, and/or sight impaired. The system may, in some embodiments, be constructed as a wearable, battery-operated device. For instance, the device may be configured to be worn on an individual's wrist (in which it may case it may also serve as a wrist watch), or may be incorporated into a patient-worn hearing aid that is configured for insertion into the patient's ear. In other embodiments, the system may, for example, be adapted to be positioned at the bedside, or to be mounted to a fixed structure such as a wall or ceiling.
Upon detecting such a strobe condition (depicted as a “new alert” event 16 in
The detection device may also optionally include an audio alarm sensor that is configured to detect audible alarm signals, such as the beep, T-3 and T-4 tone signals generated by home smoke, fire, and CO detectors, and the audible alarm signals generated by UL 217 and 2034 (smoke and CO) compliant devices. Both types of sensors (optical and audio) may be used in combination to assess whether an alarm condition is present. In addition, they may also be combined with wired and wireless signals provided by other sensors and alarm products and systems.
In the embodiment exemplified by
Alternate methods for filtering include the use of optical filters that correspond to the frequencies emitted by strobe lights not dominant in ambient light or electronic components that are similarly tuned to the appropriate optical frequencies.
The threshold detection step 34 may be performed in either the analog domain (using comparator electronics) or, as illustrated in
The alert system may be implemented using low cost and very low power devices. For example, the alert system may be powered by a small watch battery for over a year, and at a cost and size to easily fit into wrist worn devices such as watches.
In some embodiments, the alert system may include some or all of the components and functionality described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,173,525, titled “Enhanced fire, safety, security and health monitoring and alarm response method, system and device,” the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Additional details of several different embodiments of the invention are set forth below.
Multiple function wrist worn devices including standard alarm watches are currently available that have features such as light detection and vibration. Examples of this are shown in the following product descriptions:
http://www.epill.com/medicalwatches.html
These types of devices can be augmented with appropriate firmware and/or hardware for implementing the invention.
The wrist-worn device may also be capable of sensing whether the patient has reacted to the supplemental alert signal(s) 40, and for taking an appropriate based on this determination. For example, the device may include a motion or position sensor (e.g., an accelerometer), and the output of this sensor may be monitored by the device's processor to assess whether the patient is likely aware of the alarm condition. If the patient's movement is deemed insufficient, the alert system may automatically increase the intensity of the audible and/or vibration signal, or may attempt to alert the individual using another method (e.g., an electrical shock).
A complete system that implements the current invention can configured for placement at the bed side, or in any other areas or situations where the individuals would not currently be alerted. For example, the invention may be embodied in a battery-powered or AC-powered alarm clock unit, clock radio unit, or telephone unit. This unit may, for example, be capable of generating an audible signal of sufficient volume to wake a hearing-impaired individual. Bedside and proximally located devices can potentially benefit from the ability to alert the individual using low frequency audio methods at significantly lower power levels than devices that would cover an entire room.
This stand-alone unit may include the capability to connect to a monitoring system to alert others of the detected alarms, such as is described in Morales (U.S. Pat. No. 6,215,404), the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
As with the patient-worn devices, the stand-alone unit may be capable of sensing whether the patient has reacted to the supplemental alert signal(s) 40, and for taking appropriate action if the patient has not. For instance, the unit may include an infra-red or other motion sensor whose output is programmatically analyzed to assess whether the patient has gotten out of bed in response to the supplemental alarm condition.
A stand-alone unit may also incorporate additional devices and methods to increase waking effectiveness such as bed shakers or vibrators, including those with motion that is continuous, intermittent, or random.
The present invention can also be implemented using a computer peripheral device such as a USB plug-in module, such as the MSP430 evaluation device by Texas Instruments. Upon detecting the strobe light pattern as described above, the computer peripheral device may interrupt, or otherwise signal, a host computer. The host computer may then activate one or more alert mechanisms, as well as alerting a remote monitoring system and other individuals as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,215,404, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
Although this invention has been described in terms of certain preferred embodiments and applications, other embodiments and applications that are apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, including embodiments which do not provide all of the features and advantages set forth herein, are also within the scope of this invention. Accordingly, the scope of the present invention is defined only by the appended claims, which are intended to be interpreted without reference to any explicit or implicit definitions that may be set forth in any incorporated-by-reference materials.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/807,093, filed Jul. 12, 2006, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60807093 | Jul 2006 | US |
