Development and Calibration of a PATCH Device for Monitoring Children's Heart Rate and Acceleration

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Pediatric Health Monitoring
• Wearable Technology

Background:

• Existing wearables lack verification for pediatric use due to design limitations and inaccessible raw data.
• There is a need for reliable, open-source hardware for objective measurement of physiological signals in children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and calibrate an open-source, multichannel platform (PATCH) for measuring heart rate and acceleration in children aged 3-8 years.
• To validate the PATCH platform against a research-grade device for accuracy and reliability.

Main Methods:

• Sixty-three children (mean age 6.3 years) underwent a 45-minute protocol with varying activity intensities.
• The PATCH platform's measurements were compared against the Actiheart-5 device.
• Statistical analyses included mean bias, mean absolute error (MAE), mean absolute percent error (MA%E), Pearson correlations, and Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC).

Main Results:

• PATCH showed clinically acceptable accuracy for heart rate (bias: 2.26 bpm, MAE: 6.67 bpm, correlation: 0.89, CCC: 0.88).
• PATCH demonstrated high accuracy for acceleration (bias: 1.16 mg, MAE: 12.24 mg, correlation: 0.96, CCC: 0.95).

Conclusions:

• The PATCH platform provides clinically acceptable accuracy for measuring heart rate and acceleration in children.
• This open-source system offers a verifiable solution for pediatric physiological data collection.
• PATCH is a promising tool for research requiring objective, high-fidelity motion and heart rate data in young populations.