The vital signs of pulse rate, blood pressure, temperature and respiratory rate are the 'nub' of individual patient management. At the programmatic level, vital signs could also be used to monitor the burden and treatment outcome of chronic disease. Case detection and treatment outcome constitute the vital signs of tuberculosis control within the WHO's 'DOTS' framework, and similar vital signs ...

Background: Teen childbearing has potential negative health, economic, and social consequences for mother and child. Repeat teen childbearing further constrains the mother’s education and employment possibilities. Rates of preterm and low birth weight are higher in teens with a repeat birth, compared with first births. Methods: To assess patterns of repeat childbearing and postpartum contracept...

Mobile computing and portable devices, for example, are changing the relationships between human and computers, and are introducing a new approach of communication based on context. According to Figueiredo (Figueiredo & Nakamura, 2003) this new approach of communication allows people to interact seamlessly with objects, computers, environments, etc. Such technological advances are a significant...

The emergence of wireless technologies and advancements in on-body sensor design can enable change in the conventional health-care system, replacing it with wearable health-care systems, centred on the individual. Wearable monitoring systems can provide continuous physiological data, as well as better information regarding the general health of individuals. Thus, such vital-sign monitoring syst...

Wireless, wearable health and activity monitoring devices are becoming an interesting solution for early detection of health problems and remote surveillance of post-incident patients. While efficient and precise signal acquisition and processing are readily available, the biggest challenge in widespread adoption of wearable monitoring devices lies in their energy supply. The tradeoff between t...

Uncontrolled bleeding is the leading cause of preventable death on the battlefield. For the recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been reported that as many as 22% of such casualties could potentially survive. Protocols for substantial bleeding, typically activated after the patient’s arrival in a hospital, are known to improve trauma outcomes. Early identification of patients with s...

Representing the kinetic state of a patient (posture, motion, and ac‐ tivity) during vital sign measurement is an important part of continu‐ ous monitoring applications, especially remote monitoring applica‐ tions. In contextualized vital sign representation, the measurement result is presented in conjunction with salient measurement context metadata. We present an automated annotation system f...

BACKGROUND Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a common and sometimes fatal health-care-associated infection; the incidence, deaths, and excess health-care costs resulting from CDIs in hospitalized patients are all at historic highs. Meanwhile, the contribution of nonhospital health-care exposures to the overall burden of CDI, and the ability of programs to prevent CDIs by implementing CDC...

PROBLEM Vital sign (VS) assessment and monitoring are often routinely scheduled whether they are needed or not. This practice led pediatric nurse leaders to voice concerns about the frequency of VS at a National Summit for Pediatric and Adolescent Evidence-Based Practice. A search of databases yielded no direct evidence regarding frequency. However, we determined that before this question could...

A new concept in healthcare, aimed at providing continuous remote monitoring of user's vital signs, is emerging. An innovative system named WEALTHY is presented, where conducting and piezoresistive materials in the form of fiber and yarn are integrated and used as sensor and electrode elements. The simultaneous recording of vital signs allows parameter extrapolation and inter-signal elaboration...