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What problem is VitaPatch trying to solve?

Vital signs are useful in detecting medical problems or monitoring a patient's health. However, these vital signals are neither measured continuously in a healthcare facility (except ICU) nor at home. The consequences are significant: either sudden changes that indicate rapid deterioration may not be caught in time or subtle trends showing health changes may not be found until a terrible impact occurs.

With our society ageing and COVID-19 pandemic in the background, it is crucial to have continuous monitoring for patients in need of care at homes and healthcare centers to prevent rapid deterioration and identify subtle but potential health risks. By measuring temperature, SpO2, blood pressure, pulse, and respiration rates all the time, VitaPatch is one low-cost integrated solution to address the above healthcare issues.

How does VitaPatch work?

VitaPatch itself is a sensor hub. It has every necessary sensor. It then sends the data to a smartphone for further processing over the Bluetooth LE. 

The prototype of VitaPatch has two PCBs. One is the main board with nRF52840 module, power, USB interface and battery charger. The other is the daughter board with sensors. 

Here is its diagram.

diagram2_de78ba51923615ff0dca6fb328adebf87ee94807.png

Assembly of the first prototype

Below is the mainboard. This time the board is assembled manually. I am using a hotgun. So the first step is to tin the pads with a soldering iron. The before and the after is very clear.

step1-tin1_6616c2e48787429e37251a33a129b7cf4da9c04a.png

Then use more flux and align the components. Use the hotgun to solder them properly. The module is on in the below. The colourful wires are for connecting to an SWD adaptor board. SWD is used to flashing the bootloader, Nordic SoftDevice stack and application code.

step2-mod1_8a15f1d10959ff0bcd8e977a1e2a3d6ea5f91c30.png

Here is a link of a short clip: The BLE module of VitaPatch is alive!

Engineer and maker. Speaks in C, C++, Swift, Python, and JavaScript. Start to design PCB.
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