Diver Health Monitoring System (DHMS)

Military and professional diving is one of the most dangerous professions, with high death and injury rates; however, it is difficult to monitor the condition of an active, free-swimming diver. International Electronic Machines Corporation (IEM), in cooperation with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the State University of New York at Albany and with the advice and assistance of Dr. Neal Pollock of the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Environmental Physiology at Duke University, will create the Diver Health Monitoring System (DHMS), an innovative, low-cost, self-contained, multisensor, expandable system which will detect multiple different potentially dangerous conditions and provide both on-the spot and remote detection and diagnosis capability for the diver and the controlling Master Diver. Building on technology developed for the Navy, U.S. Army, NASA, and other government agencies, the DHMS will be unobtrusive, lightweight, easy to use, survive in all diving environments, provide sufficient range of communication to be usable in most if not all diving scenarios, offer either wired or wireless (acoustic) data transmission capability, on-diver data evaluation to address the potential issue of stealth or loss of ranged communication, adaptability to different environments and mission parameters, and a number of other useful features.