Hand-held medical-data capture-device having a digital infrared sensor on a circuit board that is separate from a microprocessor and having interoperation with electronic medical record systems

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9895061-B2
Application number	US-201414583765-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 28, 2014
Priority date	Oct 25, 2014
Publication date	Feb 20, 2018
Grant date	Feb 20, 2018

Abstract

In one implementation, an apparatus estimates body core temperature from an infrared measurement of an external source point using a cubic relationship between the body core temperature and the measurement of an external source point is described, estimates temperature from a digital infrared sensor and determines vital signs from a solid-state image transducer, or determines vital signs from a solid-state image transducer and estimates body core temperature from an infrared measurement of an external source point using a cubic relationship between the body core temperature and the measurement of an external source point; after which the estimated and/or determined information is transmitted to an external database.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A device comprising:
a first circuit board including:
a microprocessor;
a wireless communication subsystem that is operably coupled to the microprocessor and that is operable to transmit a representation of a temperature;
a battery operably coupled to the microprocessor; and
a first digital interface operably coupled to the microprocessor;
a second circuit board including:
a second digital interface, the second digital interface being operably coupled to the first digital interface; and
a digital infrared sensor operably coupled to the second digital interface, the digital infrared sensor having ports that provide only digital readout signals, the digital infrared sensor comprising a low noise amplifier, an analog-to-digital converter, a digital signal processor, and a pulse width modulator (PWM) in a single industry standard package; wherein the digital infrared sensor is configured with no need for recalibration after an initial factory calibration with an emissivity range from 0.1 to 1.0;
wherein the microprocessor is operable to receive from the ports of the digital infrared sensor the digital readout signals that are representative of an infrared signal, the infrared signal acquired from a forehead of a user and generated by the digital infrared sensor, and the microprocessor is further operable to determine the temperature from the received digital readout signals by using the PWM, and
wherein no analog-to-digital converter is operably coupled between the digital infrared sensor and the microprocessor.

2. The device of claim 1 wherein a display device that is operably coupled to the microprocessor further comprises:
a green traffic light operable to indicate that the temperature is good;
an amber traffic light operable to indicate that the temperature is low; and
a red traffic light operable to indicate that the temperature is high.

3. The device of claim 1 further comprising:
the digital infrared sensor having no analog sensor readout ports.

4. The device of claim 1 further comprising:
a camera operably coupled to the microprocessor and providing at least two images to the microprocessor; and
the microprocessor including a cropper that is operable to receive the at least two images and operable to crop the images to exclude a border area of the images, generating at least two cropped images, the microprocessor also including a temporal-variation-amplifier of at least two cropped images that is operable to generate a temporal variation, the microprocessor also including a vital-sign generator that is operably coupled to the temporal-variation-amplifier that is operable to generate at least one vital sign from the temporal variation and the microprocessor also operably coupled to the vital-sign generator that is operable to display the at least one vital sign.

5. The device of claim 4 , wherein the temporal-variation-amplifier further comprises:
skin-pixel-identifier.

6. The device of claim 4 , wherein the temporal-variation-amplifier further comprises:
a regional facial clusterial module.

7. The device of claim 4 , wherein the temporal-variation-amplifier further comprises:
a first frequency filter.

8. The device of claim 4 further comprising:
a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to store the at least one vital sign in a volatile memory.

9. The device of claim 4 further comprising:
a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to store the at least one vital sign in a non-volatile memory.

10. The device of claim 4 further comprising:
a storage device that is operably coupled to the vital-sign generator and that is operable to transmit the at least one vital sign to another apparatus.

11. The device of claim 1 wherein the wireless communication subsystem transmits to a static Internet Protocol address in order to reduce Internet Protocol discovery burden on the device.

12. The device of claim 1 wherein the device does not support specific discovery protocols or domain name service.

13. The device of claim 1 wherein a connection is established and data is pushed from the device through the wireless communication subsystem, thereafter an external device controls flow of the data between the device and the external device, wherein the connection further comprises: an authenticated communication channel.

14. The device of claim 1 , the wireless communication subsystem is configured to operate on a specific segment of a network.

15. The device of claim 1 , wherein the wireless communication subsystem further comprises:
a component that is operable to transmit a representation of date and time, operator identification, patient identification and manufacturer, model number and firmware revision of the device.

16. The device of claim 1 further comprising:
wherein the temperature further comprises a body core temperature and wherein determining the body core temperature is based on a cubic relationship representing three thermal ranges between a numerical representation of electromagnetic energy of an external source point and the body core temperature, wherein the cubic relationship includes a coefficient representative of different relationships between the external source point and the body core temperature in the three thermal ranges.

Assignees

• Gross Irwin
• Smith Michael G
• Khachaturian Mark
• Crawley Martin
• Gerst Steven
• Barrett John
• Cronin Michael
• Turnbull Derek
• Bodnick Jason
• Arc Devices Ltd

Inventors

• Gross Irwin
• Smith Michael G
• Khachaturian Mark
• Crawley Martin
• Gerst Steven
• Barrett John
• Cronin Michael
• Turnbull Derek
• Bodnick Jason

Classifications

• A61B5/0075

  by spectroscopy, i.e. measuring spectra, e.g. Raman spectroscopy, infrared absorption spectroscopy (A61B5/0071 takes precedence) · CPC title

• A61B5/441

  Skin evaluation, e.g. for skin disorder diagnosis · CPC title

• A61B5/7475

  User input or interface means, e.g. keyboard, pointing device, joystick · CPC title

• A61B5/6898

  Portable consumer electronic devices, e.g. music players, telephones, tablet computers · CPC title

• G08C17/02

  using a radio link · CPC title