Seizure-Monitoring Belt Sends Wireless Alert

Rice University bioengineering students have created a belt that detects increased electrical conductance in the skin and changes in respiration rate - both signs that an epileptic seizure is underway. The belt is designed for children ages six and up, and alerts are sent wirelessly to the caregiver. It has two silver/silver chloride electrodes positioned on the torso to sense electrical conductivity, and another sensor monitors breathing. The sensors are attached to a removable electronic module that acquires and transmits the signals. When the sensors show signs of a seizure, the transmitter sends data via Bluetooth to either a computer or smartphone.

Transcript

00:00:01 [Music] so we're Team season assist and we're a team of three bioengineers and two electrical engineers and we've been tasked by our company sponsor cyberonics to create a seizure monitoring device for epileptics the way that monitoring is done currently is typically done as an inpatient study where they take video of the patients and they also connect a

00:00:24 network of electrodes to the patient's scalp so it doesn't apply or it doesn't translate to patient in their homes or in their places of business or just uh the family's lifestyle if parents are wanting to monitor their children if they have a seizure we have created the smart belt so this is the device itself um it is a belt that you wrap around the chest and so Andrew will

00:00:49 demonstrate simply wrap it around you connect these two snaps right here that completes the electrical connection inside of the belt then Andrew will simply place the place the Electronic Module onto the belt we're measuring two physiological signs that relate to epileptic seizure activity first is respiration rate so we we use this Pazer resistive fabric which

00:01:13 stretches uh along with respiration and then the second physiological sign we measure is electral activity these two electrod are placed against the side of the body on the on the skin and it detects Skin conductance So during a seizure typically a patient can experience respiratory fail failure sleep apnea they can also they also have a very high electrogen uh response all

00:01:36 the data is sent via Bluetooth to an external computer or smartphone so the parent can have an alert later on um to see if the patient is actually having a seizure and come and assist the patient there's over 2.3 million people in the US who have epilepsy and there's currently no real reliable outpatient device for seizure monitoring so our hope is that uh with

00:02:01 the development of our device we can make this cheaper more affordable more accessible to to people who would normally not have this sort of technology in outpatient setting and hopefully help those people uh live more comfortable Better Lives knowing that they have a device there that will uh alert their caregivers in in the event of a seizure