Medical device system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2023293013-A1
Application number	US-202318203619-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	May 30, 2023
Priority date	Feb 10, 2021
Publication date	Sep 21, 2023
Grant date	—

Abstract

A system for interfacing an in-body medical device with an external network includes a subdermal wideband on-body network (WON) hub, which in turn includes a hub rechargeable battery, a hub processor coupled to the hub rechargeable battery, a device interface configured to communicate with the in-body medical device, and coupled to the hub processor, and a hub-satellite near field communications wireless interface coupled to the hub processor. The system also includes a wearable WON server that in turn includes a server processor, a server-satellite interface coupled to the server processor, and an external network interface coupled to the server processor. The server processor implements a software controller; and a skin-mountable WON tethered satellite that includes a wired satellite-server interface, coupled to the wearable WON server, and a tethered satellite near-field communications (NFC) wireless interface, configured to communicate with the hub-satellite NFC wireless interface, and coupled to the wired satellite-server interface.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . An on-skin patch for communication with one or more sensor devices, comprising:
a flexible patch substrate; a hardware processor secured to the flexible patch substrate and configured to obtain information from the one or more sensor devices; a battery secured to the flexible patch substrate and configured to provide power to components of the on-skin patch; one or more radio frequency to direct current (RF-to-DC) converters secured to the flexible patch substrate and configured to convert a received radio frequency signal to a direct current (DC) signal; a voltage converter and a voltage regulator secured to the flexible patch substrate and configured to convert the direct current (DC) signal to a direct current (DC) voltage to charge the battery; and an oscillator and a power amplifier secured to the flexible patch substrate and configured to generate a low-frequency power/data transmission signal.

2 . The on-skin patch of claim 1 , wherein the on-skin patch is configured to communicate with a re-usable electronics module.

3 . The on-skin patch of claim 1 , further comprising the one or more sensor devices, wherein at least one of the sensor devices is one of a heater/thermometer device and a potential of hydrogen (pH) sensor array.

4 . The on-skin patch of claim 1 , further comprising a low frequency radio frequency (RF) coupling and communication pad configured to provide communication with the hardware processor.

5 . A method for processing an input signal from a medical device, the method comprising:
obtaining the input signal from the medical device; determining if a response action is prescribed in response to the obtained input signal; performing a signal cleanup process and writing resulting data into a database of a wideband on-body network (WON) hub based on the response action not being prescribed in response to the obtained input signal; and determining a status of the response action based on the response action being prescribed in response to the obtained input signal.

6 . The method of claim 5 , further comprising establishing communication with a wideband on-body network (WON) server for processing the input signal and sending commands to appropriate satellites in response to determining that the response action is remote or requires heavy computing.

7 . The method of claim 5 , further comprising performing signal processing according to the response action recipe by the corresponding wideband on-body network (WON) hub and sending action commands to an appropriate in-body medical device in response to determining that the response action is not remote and heavy computing is not required.

8 . The method of claim 5 , wherein the signal cleanup process comprises at least one of filtering and resampling.

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Wen Bo
• Dang Bing
• Rogers Jeffrey L
• Liu Duixian

Classifications

• A61B5/0024 Primary

  for multiple sensor units attached to the patient, e.g. using a body or personal area network · CPC title

• A61B5/0028

  Body tissue as transmission medium, i.e. transmission systems where the medium is the human body · CPC title

• A61B5/0031

  Implanted circuitry · CPC title

• H04B13/005

  Transmission systems in which the medium consists of the human body · CPC title

• A61B5/0022

  Monitoring a patient using a global network, e.g. telephone networks, internet · CPC title