Device for Telemonitoring of Spine Flexion During Cervical Kyphosis Treatment

This paper presents the design and development of a reliable and cost-effective remote medical monitoring system, which allows medical specialists to observe the evolution of treatment in patients diagnosed with moderate to severe cervical kyphosis. The use of the proposed system is appropriate for the continuous monitoring of patients with cervical spine deformities, as part of a long treatment procedure at their homes or at specialized institutions. The patients can get feedback on the position they adopt, being monitored continuously during medical recovery. A software application, based on the analog signal received from a piezo-resistive deformation transducer, calculates the degrees of flexion and extension of the cervical spine of the patient and activates a series of alerts when overtaking a preset value of the elongation of the cervical curvature is detected. Thus, the exaggerated movements of the patient's head are avoided, in order to make treatment more efficient. At the same time, the system described is able to store the information gathered, in order to create a patient’s treatment history.