July 11, 2022
There are a lot of companies making bed sensors that monitor your health while you sleep. Curators鈥 Distinguished Professor Marjorie Skubic not only made one, she鈥檚 also tried a lot of them.
The crowded market is one reason it took more than a decade for Skubic to patent the one she and her team designed. But the recently awarded confirms what she鈥檚 known for years 鈥 that the hydraulic bed sensors developed at Mizzou 糖心Vlog传媒 are truly unique.
Skubic鈥檚 now-patented bed sensors are made with a flexible tube of water that measures blood flow to capture heart rate, respiratory rate and cardio activity. What differentiates the product is that it was created for older adults, whereas many similar bed sensors on the market were made with young, healthy subjects in mind.
鈥淎thletes and young people are trying to track sleep and overall health, and that鈥檚 a completely different target population,鈥 said Skubic, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. 鈥淢any of the other bed sensors provide nice signals for young, healthy subjects, which are easier to process.鈥
Another difference is in the sensitivity of the system, which is placed under a mattress to record patterns during sleep. Unlike the Mizzou made hydraulic sensor, some commercial sensors are so sensitive that signals can get crossed when two people share a bed.
鈥淚f you have one sensor under Mrs. Smith and another under Mr. Smith, and Mrs. Smith gets out of bed, her bed sensor begins picking up and reporting his data,鈥 Skubic said. 鈥淚鈥檝e seen this with my own husband because we have quite different resting heart rates. If I鈥檓 testing a different system, I can immediately tell when my bed sensor starts picking up his data.鈥
The idea for the bed sensor dates back nearly 20 years when Skubic and collaborators began working on eldercare technology at Tiger Place Apartments. She and Marilyn Rantz, a Curators鈥 Distinguished Professor Emerita in the School of Nursing, were using a simple bed sensor system that monitored heart rate but provided only thresholds. A person鈥檚 heart rate was deemed 鈥渓ow,鈥 鈥渘ormal鈥 or 鈥渉igh.鈥 Rantz wanted an exact number.
鈥淔inally, one of the PhD students working on the project, David Heise 鈥 who is now on faculty at Lincoln University 鈥 went to the hardware store and bought $20 worth of supplies and created the prototype that would become the hydraulic bed sensor,鈥 Skubic said.
Skubic is now working with Professor Giovanna Guidoboni to further expand the work, using sensors to monitor interactions between the heart and cardiovascular system.
Also included on the recent patent award are: Rantz, Mihail Popescu, Shuang Wang, Isaac J Sledge, Rainer Dane A Guevara, Elena Florea, and Jim Keller.
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