Use of TEDS to Improve Performances of Smart Biomedical Sensors and Instrumentation

This paper aims to highlight the advances and the latest novel and emergent technologies, implementations, and applications in the field of biomedical smart transducers and sensors according to the guidelines of the ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451 Standards. I focus attention on the use of transducer electronic data sheet (TEDS) to suggest new features and ideas in order to improve performances of biomedical sensors and instrumentation. The final aim is to address the design and development of smart transducers and sensors using the guidelines of the above-mentioned family of Standards. ISO/IEC/IEEE 21451-x (previously known as IEEE 1451.x) is a family of Standards, which allows designer to project smart transducers and sensors with reference to protocols, extensible messaging and presence protocol, TEDS, signal treatment, networks, Web services, radio frequency identification, and so on. In detail, this paper proposes the use of TEDS to store information concerning patient clinical history and diagnostic criteria in order to project learned and patient-adapting devices. In this way, the sensing system uses the built-in information to optimize the data processing by adapting the diagnostic algorithm to the specific patient. Such a new approach in designing biomedical sensors allows to improve reliability and accuracy of final diagnosis. Three application cases are proposed and discussed to guide designers and developers in projecting smart biomedical sensors.