title: Remote respiration monitoring system for sleep apnea detection.
abstract: Sleep is a dynamic physiological process, its primary function being the restoration of the central nervous system. Because sleep disorders affect a significant part of the population the dynamic long term monitoring of human respiration plays a very important role in diagnosis and treatment.
  
  
  METHODS
  We describe a remote monitoring system designed for in-hospital or at-home detection with a high degree of accuracy of sleep-related disorders in patients experiencing episodes of obstructive sleep apnea. Patient's respiratory rate is continuously measured by using wireless devices and then transfered to a central monitoring station via a wireless sensor network. The central monitoring station runs a respiration monitoring application that receives the patient's respiratory rate from the network and activates an alert upon detection of a sleep apnea episode.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A user-friendly graphical user interface was designed for the respiration monitoring application that displays patient's respiratory rates and sleep apnea alerts. A prototype of the system has been developed, implemented and tested.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The described system allows persons with respiratory diseases or elderly to be monitored at their homes, as an alternative to medical supervision in hospitals.
authors: Faculty of Automatic Control and Computer Engineering, Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iaşi.
authors: C
authors: C
authors: Rotariu
authors: Faculty of Medical Bioengineering, University of Medicine and Pharmacy Grigore T. Popa, Iaşi.
authors: H
authors: H
authors: Costin
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D018670:Monitoring, Ambulatory / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D019114:Remote Consultation / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D012891:Sleep Apnea Syndromes / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology