Wearable medical device saves lives on the battlefield

Cambridge Design Partnership has announced a wearable device designed to measure and monitor vital signs of trauma patients in emergency situations

The First Response Monitor, created by Cambridge Design Partnership, is designed to help medics monitor both heart rate and respiratory rate.

According to Cambridge Design Partnership respiratory rate is often neglected by automated monitoring systems.

However, the benefits of accurately monitoring respiratory rate are clear and when combined with other parameters, such as heart rate and body temperature, can indicate life-threatening conditions such as sepsis.

When designing the new compact device, Cambridge Design Partnership interviewed a range of army medics about their needs and challenges in multiple casualty emergency situations.

An unmet need was identified for a low-cost device to bridge the gap between manual methods of vital signs measurement and more expensive patient monitoring systems.

The First Response Monitor is a lightweight, robust and low-cost wearable biometric device which monitors patients and collects, then transmits, data in real-time. This enables the medic to care for a greater number of casualties, providing more effective casualty triage to deliver improved patient outcomes.

The small device clips onto a patient’s nose and monitors breathing rate and heart rate, giving ‘at a glance’ indication of both parameters.

This data can then transmitted using bluetooth to a smartphone app or tablet, enabling data analyses such as individual patient trend graphs and multiple patient triage or situational awareness across the group.

James Baker, partner, Cambridge Design Partnership said: “At Cambridge Design Partnership we’re always looking for ways to find a solution to a clear, unmet need.

“With the First Response Monitor we’ve combined our expertise in wearable connected devices with our extensive medical experience to develop a technology for effectively measuring breathing and heart rate.

“The monitor can help save lives in a variety of environments and we’re really keen to speak to partners about developing the potential applications further.”