The Evaluation of Nodes of Body Sensor Networks: Wearable Blood Pressure Measuring Devices

• Authors: Yuan-ting Zhang;X. Y. Xiang;Carmen C. Y. Poon
• Venue: BSN '06 Proceedings of the International Workshop on Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks
• Year: 2006

It is suggested using wearable medical devices and sensors as the nodes of body sensor networks (BSN) could allow better long-term monitoring of health condition. Nonetheless, the protocol and criteria for validating these nodes in clinical settings is often overlooked. By using the validation of blood pressure (BP) measurement devices as an example, this paper reveals the need for new standards for nodes of BSN and proposes essential considerations to it. It is observed from a previous clinical survey and our theoretical analysis that there are disagreements in existing standards on the validation of conventional BP devices. Moreover, an experiment carried out by our group on 85 subjects demonstrates the inappropriateness of using the existing protocols that are setup for validating cuff-based BP devices to evaluate new cuff-less measurement techniques. The results suggested that a third objective measure could be introduced to relate the variant standards. It is also proposed that different validation criteria should be used for nodes of BSN that are developed based on new measurement principles.