A flexible measurement system for physiological signals in mobile health care

In the nearest future a lot of post-operative treatment and health monitoring is going to be performed in people's homes instead of in hospital. The increasing number of elderly people in the developed countries and the need for more advanced medical treatment and equipment in conjunction with economical demands will force the development of more cost-effective solutions. The equipment used must be very rugged and safe for both the patient and the operator and easily configured for a number of different measurement parameters. In most cases storing data on a memory card in the equipment will be sufficient but sometimes a wireless real-time measurement system is needed. This paper presents an acquisition system flexible enough for a number of different applications, home care, mobile health care and other biomedical measurement situations. A prototype system has been tested with sufficient performance for several physiological signals.