ECG-Based Non-Invasive Cardio-Respiratory Monitoring for the Non-Intubated in-Hospital Patient

An important limitation of expanding the clinical resources for the intensive care of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, as well as other critically ill patients, is a robust system of cardio-pulmonary monitoring. Currently available systems rely on hard-wired monitoring systems that are limited primarily to monitoring cardiac function, and are not expandable. Non-invasive clinical respiratory monitoring of COVID-19 patients is currently limited to standard vital sign monitoring (i.e. pulse oximetry and visual respiratory rate measurement), and the technologies of impedance plethysmography and inductance plethysmography to measure respiratory rate (RR). Impedance-based measurements of RR are plagued by motion artifact, while inductance-based measurements of respiratory rate are uncomfortable and require additional equipment. Neither provides accurate tidal volume (TV) measurements.
The central goal of this entrepreneurial proposition is to rely on a rich previously protected intellectual property and publication record, to develop methods for estimating the RR, TV and evolving ischemia of the in-Hospital patient, by recording cardiac electrical activity from the body surface, using Hospital-based Wi-Fi to transmit the cardiac signals to a processing station, measuring the beat-to-beat variability in the morphology of electrocardiographic waveforms, and using the measured beat-to-beat variability to estimate the RR, TV and the severity of ischemia, without the need of additional hardware.
Success of this proposition will help develop a novel, readily expandable, diagnostic device, which will dramatically improve the non-intubated in-Hospital patient monitoring, and management.