Responder Wireless Physiological Monitoring Device

The primary cause of mortality in firefighters is cardiovascular disease, which accounts for 45% of fatalities among personnel on duty. Although physiological monitoring devices have existed for decades, their use on subjects during strenuous activities (such as firefighting) has been significantly limited due to excessive signal artifacts and extremely low user compliance arising from the invasive nature of the technologies. QUASAR has spent the past five years developing truly noninvasive, field-deployable sensor technologies and wireless data acquisition systems that address both of these issues. We propose a system for monitoring on-duty firefighters, in which QUASARs noninvasive ECG sensors are incorporated into an item of firefighter clothing. The sensors are combined with QUASARs miniature, ultra-low power wireless data acquisition systems to form a Body Area Network. A flexible, modular approach enables additional sensor technologies to be incorporated according to the differing needs of other emergency responder operational environments (CBRN). The system will perform real-time ECG monitoring and communicate wirelessly with the Command Post on the cardiac status of the firefighter. Alerts are generated according to the level of cardiac strain for a firefighter or the presence of dangerous arrhythmias, indicating increasing levels of risk of an immediate cardiovascular incident.