Home Health Monitor

Kevin Liang, Haoming Shi, Nathan Tang, Frank Wu

Problem STatement

Heart failure currently affects over 6 million Americans with about 20% of them having to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge and about 50% after 6 months. Rehospitalization leads to higher costs for both hospitals and patients and typically leads to worsening patient health outcomes. Conventional methods for physicians to monitor their patient outside of the hospital requires voluntary and honest health reports from their patients. Hence there is a need for a more reliable method of tracking patient's heart failure progression at home.

Symptoms of Heart failure

Shortness of breath
Rapid/Irregular heartbeats
Swelling in lower extremities
Rapid weight gain from fluid retention
Fatigue and weakness

Limitations of current monitoring methods

Current methods of patient home monitoring methods are self monitoring and wearable devices. The former requires the patients to measure and keep track of their health at home. Limitations are that it requires the patient's initiative and many older patients tend to forget to self monitor. While wearable devices don't require the patient to remember to use it they are instead limited by fact that many patients may be reluctant to wear them and that many are not designed for clinical uses. A method that is both contactless and requires little patient initiative would be very useful in tracking heart failure symptom progression at home.

Video overview

Group342021HomeHealthMonitor.mp4

Image source:

By: Frank Wu