Epileptic Seizure Warning System - A Wearable Electronic Visioned for Healthcare
- Mar 20, 2016
- 3 min read
Epileptic Seizure Warning System (E.S.W.S) is a wearable device that focus on the wellbeing of epilepsy patients. It was collaboratively created by:
Anderson Wang, Yumeng (Rainbow) Li, Bianca Zhu, Boya Fang, Nancy Lu
Motivation
E.S.W.S was rooted from my true experience. One of my cousin suffers from epilepsy since born, he had multiple serious seizures when he was little. Now he is close 20, but the symptoms still occur unexpectedly, his parents have been worrying about the danger of sudden seizure for many years. When our team started the challenge, we thought maybe we could help out my cousin and his parents, and many more like him.
User Research
After some extensive researches, surprisingly we found that the biggest threat to people who have epilepsy is not the epilepsy itself. The more dangerous cause of death is SUDEP (Sudden, Unexpected Death in Epilepsy), which is often caused by seizure related reasons, including cardiac arrest, suffocating and physical injuries associated with falls. As currently the best way to prevent SUDEP is to lower the risk by controlling seizure, the solution for SUDEP is very limited. Therefore, closely monitor patient's vital sign and send out warning the minute danger occurs is crucial other than the medication treatment.
Design Approach
From the result of user research, seizure became our primary pointcut. The irregular muscle movements controlled by faulty neural discharge is the primary symptom that indicate the potential risk of SUDEP.
With the irregular muscle movements in focus, we decided to use EMG (Electromyography) to monitor patient muscle movements. We used an EMG sensor and placed three electrodes onto patient's forearm.
The EMG sensor constantly reads electrical activity of patient's muscle, and creates an electromyography for normal muscle movements. In a case of a seizure strike, the rapid convulsion will reflect drastic changes in electromyography. Once the changes exceeds the system trigger threshold, our algorithm defines that the patient is very likely having a seizure. We also utilized an accelerometer as a higher-level trigger for better accuracy.
Based on the wearable device concept, we designed the entire system to be integrated, in a form of clothing sleeve, this leaves room for be more integrated into any clothes, patient can easily wear it everyday.
Prototype
The prototype is based on a Arduino Lilypad system, an accelerometer and EMG sensor connect to Lilypad for data processing, Lilypad then controls one buzzer and four LEDs for warning signals. The advantage of Lilypad system is that they are designed for wearable electronics from ground-up, which allows integration and easy hide-away.
All electrical connections are made of conductive threads which is suited for bending, wear and tear for wearable applications.
For the electrodes, we used silver conductive fabric on elastic bands to create durable, secure contact to patient's skin for electric signal.
On the outer layer, there is a set of first-aid guidelines that will be guided through LED sequence to help others to perform proper first-aid procedure.
Future Development
The E.S.W.S was left room for future improvements at design stage. Our future development could involve a communication module that is small enough to be integrated into the current system, which can provide cellular communication to get medical care epilepsy patient needed even when alone. Once the system is trigger by a seizure, system can automatically inform emergency responders, family doctors and caretakers with exactly location of the patient without user intervene.
We hope that the E.S.W.S can become a real product one day to make people who are at risk feel safer, and ultimately save lives from SUDEP.
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