Amplet Inc, a Japanese firm researching and developing wireless products, prototyped a "human body communication-based simple electrocardiograph," a system that measures electrocardiographic data using human body communication operating principles and components.
When a person sits on the chair and place their hands on the electrodes on both arms, the system measures their cardiac motion and transmits the data to a remote location via the Internet. This was part of Amplet's joint research on the use of human body communication technologies in remote medical and health care applications being conducted with Alps Electric Co Ltd.
"We have no intention to make this system replace current electrocardiographs," said Hideyuki Nebiya, president of Amplet and lecturer at Tokyo Denki University. "We position it as nothing but a system intended for preventive medical care that helps recognize signs of diseases easily. We are aiming to test it more and explore whether the system can obtain medically useful data, asking professors at medical colleges and universities for advices from now on."
Most applications of human body communication thus far focused on its "communication capability" that uses human bodies as transmission channels for locking and unlocking doors, electronic commuter passes, headsets and data transmission between wearable devices.
Amplet's prototype electrocardiograph system, on the other hand, applied human body communication technologies to "sensor and measurement functions." Nebiya said it is easy to make systems integrated with sensors and telecommunication devices for remote medical care, etc, because "sensor and measurement functions" and "communication capabilities" can be used in parallel.
Peter S Hall, professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK, categorized the forms of human body communication in the medial field into the following three. They are (1) "on-body communication" between wearable devices, etc, on the same person's body, (2) "off-body communication" between a human body communication device on the body and a telecommunication system placed apart from the body and (3) "in-body communication" between the inside and outside of the body.
The new electrocardiograph falls into the third category. Usually, in-body communication systems are those that transfer data collected by a device embedded in the body to another device outside the body via the body itself. Amplet's prototype seems to differ from them in the sense that "it sees the body itself as a transmitter for human body communication," Nebiya said.
"For electroencephalographs and microseismometers, in addition to electrocardiographs, human bodies can be considered as transmitters that transmit electrical signals via the human body," he added.
The concept of seeing the human body as a transmitter has existed for some time, he said.
"Human bodies are warm with body temperature and emit milliwaves," Nebiya said. "We once developed a milliwave passive radar that detects milliwaves emitted from human bodies to monitor people going in and out for security purpose.
"Speaking of radars, many think of active radars, which emit radar waves and receive waves reflected back by objects. In fact, it is possible to determine the existence and even the shape of people at a short distance only with a receiver and without emitting radar waves because the body emits milliwaves. Such systems are called passive radars.
"What triggered us to consider developing a medical application of human body communication was the idea that human bodies might be emitting some sort of biological information at low frequencies in the same manner. And we began to realize that electrocardiograph and electroencephalograph technologies were quite similar to human body communication as we researched them more.
"Telecommunication is not the only application area for human body communication. It is important to flexibly consider what human body communication is and what applications it can be used for."
Though the simple electrocardiograph actually succeeded in observing waveforms, it is still in the testing phase. And Amplet aims to improve its performance.
"In terms of the hardware, we need to explore circuit technologies suited for the electrodes and the device and analyze the propagation path," Nebiya said.
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