Non-contact health monitoring of patient volunteers in secure rooms
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Non-contact health monitoring of patient volunteers in secure rooms
IRAS ID
197400
Contact name
Oliver Gibson
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Oxehealth Ltd
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 9 days
Research summary
This study is part of a project to develop a prototype non-contact health monitoring system for secure rooms. The system uses software to process data from cameras automatically and estimate health parameters such as heart rate and breathing rate. Volunteers assessed clinically to be low risk will be recruited in Broadmoor Hospital to spend time in a room in which the camera-based monitoring system has been installed. One designated member of Broadmoor staff will always have responsibility for the patient participant's wellbeing and safety. Health monitoring in a high secure environment is difficult: patients may be at risk from physical illness, medication side effects or self harm, but conventional wearable sensors would be impractical (and often unsafe) for patients to wear indefinitely. Checking patient health at night is a particular problem: staff perform checks as often as every 15 minutes, turning on a nightlight and looking through the door hatch to assess whether a patient is breathing. Problems between staff visits might not be detected, and the visits disrupt patients’ sleep (with implications for safety and therapy effectiveness) and negatively affect the staff-patient relationship. A non-contact monitoring system offers a solution, as it can run continuously and unobtrusively, and ultimately raise an alarm if a patient appears to be unwell or in danger. This study will test the performance of our prototype system (without issuing alerts to staff) when monitoring the vital signs of patient volunteers, and understand the patients' initial responses to the concept. This project is jointly funded by Innovate UK and Oxehealth Ltd, and follows a previous successful proof of concept study and a prototype study involving staff volunteers.
REC name
Wales REC 5
REC reference
16/WA/0091
Date of REC Opinion
21 Mar 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion