Continuous Real-Time Remote Monitoring of Severely or Chronically Ill Children

Compared to parents of healthy children, parents of severely or chronically ill children have significantly worse physical and mental health and a lower quality of life, e.g. because of lack of sleep. The proposed solution aims at assisting caregivers by means of a remote monitoring service run by professional nursing staff which should allow parents to get a good night’s sleep. A smart algorithm has been developed to detect if a particular parameter (heart rate, respiration rate or oxygen saturation) has exceeded a pre-defined threshold and thus may imply an emergency. Parents are only alerted after a professional nurse in the monitoring centre has cross-checked vital parameter trends and carried out an audio-visual inspection. The quality and accuracy of the system has been validated through iterative testing including a test performed in a children’s hospital to ensure that the monitoring system is not inferior to a hospital set-up.