Issues in wearable mobile sensor platform for lower limb prosthetic users

Around the world health services are looking for ways of improving patient care for amputees suffering from diabetes, while at the same time reducing costs. These include remote monitoring of physiological data such as temperature, gait, heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygenation (SpO2), respiration and glucose levels. The e-health wearable communication systems show promise in delivering improvements in patient care while at the same time reducing both the demand for resources and the financial burden on healthcare systems. These systems have the capability of monitoring, logging and transmitting the patient data to a central health authority. Depending on the patient, it is often critical that the monitoring system reliability is high to deliver the appropriate patient care and ensure patient safety. These wearable systems that would be placed in the prosthesis of the amputee are dependent on the battery power to drive them for continuous monitoring followed by data transmission. However, if improperly designed will rapidly deplete the battery energy making the system short lived and quickly prone to failure. Also, weight and size of the battery is a concern, as a heavier battery could induce discomfort to the amputee. In this paper, transmission system design and methods to reduce power consumption will be discussed using the example of prosthetic socket compatible temperature and gait monitoring data systems.