Curtin Sarawak’s innovative body sensors could mean better healthcare for thousands in rural areas

Miri – 23 October, 2009 – Body sensors developed by the Electrical/Communication Engineering & Computing (ECEC) Department of Curtin University of Technology, Sarawak Malaysia (Curtin Sarawak) are set to advance healthcare in rural Sarawak in the coming years. Thousands of rural folk with little or no access to medical facilities stand to benefit from the devices.

It is said that out of the 250 rural villages in the Baram area of Miri Division, at least 50 are still not connected by road and the villagers’ only means of transport is by river and jungle trekking. The excessive cost of travelling to the nearest clinics, often involving hours of travel and great distances, also hampers rural dwellers from obtaining quality health services.

Pak Enche, an elderly inhabitant of Kuala Nyalau deep in the interior of Miri Division, is a good case in point. Even on a good day, it takes many hours for the centenarian to travel by boat and road from his remote village to Miri Hospital for a check-up. It is an exceptionally tiring journey for him, let alone for anyone with a serious medical condition.

The body sensors would be a blessing for people like Pak Enche. Strapped to the arm, they monitor vital body signs, including temperature, pulse, respiration and blood pressure. Mobile phones are used to receive the signals from the sensors and store them for diagnostics purposes.

Physicians will effectively be able to monitor and diagnose their patients’ conditions remotely, reducing the workload of rural healthcare workers and saving villagers the hassle of travelling long distances to the nearest clinics for medical consultation.

The project to develop a wireless electrocardiogram (ECG) as a body sensor is one of seven research projects funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) being carried out at Curtin Sarawak, which has an increasingly vibrant research culture and participates in research in a wide range of disciplines.

Spearheaded by senior ECEC lecturer Dr. Wong Kiing Ing and four students, the project is a fine example of Curtin Sarawak’s faculty-student collaboration in research.

Research activities at Curtin Sarawak are an essential component of academic excellence and they not only contribute to advancing knowledge and providing innovative solutions to solving industrial challenges, but by drawing students into research activities, they create a learning culture that promotes and develops professionalism amongst its graduates.

Head of Department Dr. Sashigaran Sivathasan adds that the ECEC Department ensures that theories learnt in the classroom are translated into practical engineering grounded in the real world.

Students are taught by highly-qualified academics who are graduates of prestigious universities like Oxford, University of Manchester, University of Southampton, Australian National University and Imperial College London. In addition, the department boasts excellent infrastructure and laboratories for a wide range of research.

“This body sensor design project and its outcomes are testament to our high standard of teaching, research and facilities,” said Dr. Sivathasan.

In their electronic design classes, ECEC students are required to design body sensors to capture electrocardiogram (ECG), photoplethysmograph (PPG) and motion information. The ECGs and PPGs provide heart and respiratory rate information, while the motion signal can be used to detect falls.

Falls can be detrimental to the elderly and the seriously ill but injury from falls can be minimised if detected by the body sensors and paramedics tend to them quickly. The body sensors therefore have to be of small size, driven by low voltage, wearable, and with wireless link capability.

According to one of the students, Nurul Jameela Nor Mazlan, wireless ECG sensors like the ones being developed at Curtin Sarawak hold tremendous potential for remote healthcare monitoring and disease diagnosis. The final year student and the rest of her study group are passionate about the project and most eager to see the devices put to commercial use.

“When I started working with Dr. Wong on designing the wireless ECG sensor, I did not expect I would develop a passion for biomedicine engineering, but I became so fascinated with it that I decided to conduct further research into ECG devices under the tutelage of Dr. Wong for my final year project,” Nurul related.

“Having visited some of the remote villages like Kuala Nyalau and understanding the health needs of the villagers has also encouraged me to develop the best possible body sensor to suit their needs,” she added.

She pointed out that though it is not the first wireless ECG in the world, it has its intrinsic features and advantages. “Existing wireless ECGs are confined to sports performance monitoring and usually have to be clipped to the forehead, whilst ours is specifically designed for healthcare. It is also low-cost, can be manufactured in small volumes, is simple to use, and integrates easily with hospital computer systems,” she says.

Nurul said that in the early stages of development, the ECG sensor registered a 10 to 15 per cent error rate, which was still far from ideal. She has since identified the problems and substantially reduced the error rate by using more effective electronic components, but further modifications are required in order to achieve perfect readings.

“To get perfect readings, the sensor has to adapt to skin resistance. Due to differing levels of moisture in people’s skin, you may get different levels of skin resistance from one person to the next, and this can affect their heartbeat readings. One of my tasks is to make sure the sensor is adaptive to different types of skin,” said Nurul.

According to Dr. Wong, the ECEC team envisions far more versatile sensors in the future, probably incorporating features like the ability to continuously monitor patients’ health conditions and even pre-diagnose diseases, but these will be done one step at a time.

He said semiconductor or Integrated Circuit (IC) technology has undergone phenomenal development since the 1960s with the latest microprocessors made of millions of micro-transistors capable of performing large computations and running on as little as 0.8 volts.

“Given such technology, it should be possible to harvest energy from the temperature gradient between the human body and the ambient temperature to power up our ECG sensors. However, for now, we are using watch batteries to drive them. In time, we will make use of these latest technological advances to improve our designs,” said Dr. Wong.

“In the meantime, I hope the newer ECEC students will follow in the current group’s footsteps and develop an interest in biomedicine engineering and applications, and continue the department’s research into body sensors well into the future,” he added.

Nurul will soon be attending an international conference on biomedicine engineering in Innsbruck, Austria, which she expects will help her gain more in-depth knowledge in the field and help in her future research. She is also planning study visits to Ain Shams University in Egypt and Ireland’s Cork University in the near future, for which she currently seeking corporate sponsorship.

The wireless ECG sensor.

Evolution of the students’ wireless ECG sensor design from that in

2008 (left) to the latest design in 2009 (right).

The ECG sensor connected to voltage supply. More examples of the

chip can be seen in the foreground.

High quality ECG reading achieved by the wireless ECG sensor.

Rural folk like Pak Enche (left) will benefit greatly from a wireless

body sensor.

Student researcher Nurul Jameela Nor Mazlan looks forward to

seeing the body sensor put to commercial use.