WEMU: Epilepsy Detector & Monitor

There has been a great deal of news in the field of wearable technology of late, especially in medical circles.  The latest initiative is a collaborative effort by a medical device company, Bioserenity (from France), an epilepsy organization, Epilepsy Action from the UK and another French organization called Efappe. Their combined efforts have led to the first of a kind smart clothing system and a companion app, which helps monitor and diagnose epilepsy.

The conventional epilepsy diagnosis and treatments rely on seizure recordings through fixed monitoring systems that are only available in hospital. Most often that not, the patients’ seizures are not recorded; this is partly due to the limited accessibility of these fixed systems.  This lack of seizure information for patients has a knock on effect and leads to suboptimal diagnosis and treatments for the individuals concerned.

The WEMU smartwear system aims to improve the accuracy of diagnosis, reduce the diagnostic time and assist in designing a more accurate drug course of therapy for the patient.

The WEMU system consists of a smart shirt and a smart hat.  The clothing has embedded dry-sensors, which constantly monitor the patient’s cardiac, muscle and brain activities. The sensors are connected to a battery pack that is rechargeable, through embedded electronic circuitry.

The physiological data that is obtained from the sensors is transmitted to a smartphone app via low energy Bluetooth. The smartphone app then analyzes the received data and allows the data to be visualized by the patient or a healthcare professional. The smartphone data can also be uploaded, through a secure connection, to a cloud system to allow for a medical professional to view the data from a remote location.

In addition to improving the diagnosis and treatment for patients, the WEMU system also allows for more accurate information on the occurrences of seizures that is valuable to the epilepsy research community.

The people behind WEMU are now running an Indiegogo campaign in order to raise funds to further develop the product and take it to market.  This is the kind of medical tech that really should be backed as it could help a massive amount of people who currently suffer from this neurological disorder.

What do you think?  As always, if you would like to leave a sensible comment, then please do so in the comments section below.

[Image via springwise]

SOURCE: http://www.medgadget.com/2014/08/wemu-smart-clothing-for-epilepsy-monitoring-and-diagnosis-video.html