The Nightingale project has acted as catalyzer for the development of wearable wireless patient monitoring technology in Europe. The project is widely known throughout the global medical device industry. Our focus on sustainability proved to be very important, as finalists all developed reusable, rechargeable sensors. Our desire for a complete vital signs feature set has raised the bar for future wearable sensors; they should also be able to measure blood oxygen saturation and blood pressure in addition to easier-to-measure parameters as heart rate and respiratory rate.
The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly demonstrated the need for systems that allow patients to stay at home longer and postpone hospital admission, and/or to decrease the duration of hospital admission by allowing a safe early discharge home. The socio-economic impact of wide implementation of such technology is immense, as it will redefine the concept of hospital care and alter indications for admission. Nonetheless, there are remaining technical and scientific challenges; continuous measurement of blood oxygen saturation and blood pressure requires a valid ‘pulse plethysmogram’, an optical technique that is very sensitive to patient motion. Finally, the creation of our envisioned self-learning high-level clinical decision support system requires the generation of large data sets from thousands of patients, each wearing the wireless monitoring system during their period of illness, as well as prospective randomized trials to determine the effects on patient outcomes.
