IIT's life-saving innovation: Now, doctors in the hospital can monitor health while patient is being ferried in ambulance

Several times critical patients lose their lives while on their way to hospitals. Every second in the ambulance ferrying them to the hospital is crucial in saving a life. Unfortunately, even as me make technological advancements, there is no such technology at present that can help doctors at the hospital to continuously monitor the condition of the patient when the latter is on the move.

Currently in such situations apart from family members, a medical technician accompanies a critical patient in an ambulance. But this technician has limited knowledge. Understanding the seriousness of the critical moments of a patient's life, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur has come up with a wireless technology for remote monitoring of patients' condition while they are being ferried in ambulances.

Christened 'AmbuSens', the technology has been developed in the SWAN lab of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) of the institute.

AmbuSens is capable of wireless monitoring of various physiological parameters like ECG, heart-rate, temperature and blood-pressure. It can be fitted in an ambulance to ensure remote monitoring of patient condition by the doctors even before they reach the hospital.

The system preserves patient's data confidentiality while simultaneously using the analytic and computing power of cloud computing.

The web interface of the AmbuSens system provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for doctors and paramedics alike with data visualisation tools such as real-time ECG graph rendering, and can be accessed from internet-enabled laptops, tablets and smartphones.

"This technology will be a boon for the referral patients who are transported from a hospital in remote area to a city hospital," said Sudip Misra, a professor at department of CSE, IIT Kharagpur. He is also the principal investigator for developing this system.

"Now with the doctors being able to monitor the patients on transit they can suggest medical interventions to the technician. This can be lifesaving," he added.

The embedded system of AmbuSens includes both hardware and software.
The referred hospital and the referee hospital as well as the ambulance will have laptops or tablets with internet connection.

The patient will be fitted with wireless body sensors, which will help doctors of both referred and referee hospitals to continuously monitor the health condition of the patients in real-time.

The technology can be life saving for accident victims or cardiac patients who need to be transported to the hospital immediately.

The team behind the concepy has conducted successful field trials of the developed system at All India institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Bhubaneswar and BC Roy technological hospital (BCRTH), IIT Kharagpur.