Development and application of a general purpose ambulatory monitor

This paper details the development and application of a multi-channel, general purpose, lightweight, portable monitor. The monitor is constructed with separate analogue and digital circuitry so that a dedicated analogue board may be developed for each new application with the same general purpose digital board, the latter requiring only changes to the firmware. At the heart of the digital circuit is an Arizona Microchip PIC 16C64 microcontroller, which can communicate with a computer via a serial port and perform both simple and relatively complex data analysis prior to storing data in memory. The low-power design enables the circuit to operate for potentially longer than a week on one set of batteries. Designed with medical applications in mind, preliminary data from three studies utilising the monitor are described. These include measurements of bladder pressure, personal exposure to pollutant gases and body temperature. The studies demonstrate the system's versatility in a variety of investigations requiring different signal processing and sampling protocols. It is hoped that, in the future, this ambulatory device will contribute to the diagnosis, treatment and understanding of a wide variety of disease conditions.