JP2000000214A - Sleeping monitor device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To grasp the health condition of an examinee without giving a mental and physical burden by detecting the body movement of the examinee, extracting one signal of heart rate, respiration rate, or the like, of the examinee and detecting and recording body data of the examinee. SOLUTION: An air mat 11 is arranged under the body of the lying examinee and the pressure of the inside of the mat 11 is detected by a fine differential pressure sensor 13 and an absolute pressure sensor 3 fixed through an air tube 12 which is connected to one end of the mat 11 to measure the body movement of a person to be assisted or a patient. A signal extracting means 2 fetches a heart heat signal, a breath signal, a turning frequency signal and a snore signal from the output signal of the sensor 13 by using a proper filter circuit, and the outputs of the signals are respectively processed by a sleep monitor controller 5 and recorded as body data. The controller 5 is connected with a display 6 and can monitor the formed data of the signals in the form of a graph or digitized numerical information.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a sleep monitoring apparatus for monitoring the health of elderly people and patients requiring care by monitoring the sleep state of the elderly and patients requiring care.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, the population of the elderly has tended to increase, and the society has been changing to a so-called aging society. Especially in the case of home nursing, family members need to be careful at all times, even at night, and the labor involved is immense. As a result, caregivers often become ill, which is a problem.

[0003] As a method of grasping the health condition, frequent examinations and medical interviews are performed. However, in the conventional examination method, it is necessary to attach a measuring detector to the subject, and the awake state while lying down Although it can be applied to a subject, it is difficult to use it for a cared person who is sleeping. In the case of the elderly, if they are hospitalized, they will be screened and examined every day, so they can monitor their physical condition.
It is difficult to perform medical examinations and tests frequently.

In many cases, the condition of a cared person, which changes daily, gradually changes. If such a change is detected and fed back to treatment or care work, the health of the cared person or patient can be maintained. Will be helpful. In particular, it is impossible to test the cared person or patient during sleep, and there is no complaint from the cared person or patient. Can not.

In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-75310, which is disclosed as a device for monitoring patient's physical data,
A monitoring method has been proposed in which a patient is fixed to a body part such as a wrist, an ankle, a finger, and an arm with a band or the like, and body data is transmitted to a patient monitor device using wireless communication or optical communication means. However, although this method eliminates wiring, it must be worn on the patient's body such as wrists, ankles, fingers, and arms, and as a result, it is inevitable to cause discomfort, which may hinder sleep. Problem.

[0006] Further, in the bedtime monitoring apparatus disclosed in JP-A-7-31592 and JP-A-7-79933, a body movement that should detect a body movement of a patient using a pressure sensor. The absence of a signal is determined and reported as an abnormality of the patient, and it is not possible to continuously monitor subtle changes in the physical condition of the patient. That is, in the above publication, there are provided two detecting means, a state detecting means for detecting the presence / absence of the patient's bedding and a body movement detecting means installed on the bedding and detecting the patient's body movement, and the presence of the patient in bed is confirmed. In this case, the body movement detecting means detects body movements such as turning over and heartbeat to determine whether the patient has any abnormality.

[0007] The above-mentioned bedtime monitoring device can determine a state in which an abnormality such as cardiac arrest occurs in the care receiver or the patient and the body motion hardly disappears. Can not. Since the physical condition of the cared person changes every day, it is necessary to always appropriately grasp the health condition of the cared person. Therefore, the above bedtime monitoring device is not suitable as a method for obtaining physical information useful for health care of the cared person.

In many cases, the care recipient or the patient does not speak until the patient becomes ill. Therefore, when an interview or regular inspection is performed, the countermeasures are often too late, and the inspection is performed. However, there is a problem in that, for example, the wearing of the inspection device places a burden on the cared person, disturbs the mental state of the cared person and the patient, and adversely affects the treatment.

Therefore, there is a need for a health condition monitoring means which can grasp the health condition of a cared person or a patient at bedtime without putting a mental or physical burden on the cared person or a patient.

[0010]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In view of the above problems, physical data of a cared person or patient during sleep can be collected without putting a mental or physical burden on the cared person or patient, and health management can be performed. The challenge is to provide for Here, in order to monitor the body data for grasping the health condition without wiring and without attaching the detector to the cared person or the patient, attention is paid to the body movement of the cared person or the patient. The body movements of the care receiver and the patient include turning over, breathing, pulse (heart rate), snoring, and the like, and the body movement is observed as a superposition of these.
Turning over, breathing, pulse (heartbeat), snoring, etc. each include a unique frequency component, which can be separated and extracted by using appropriate filter means.

The present invention detects a body movement of a cared person or a patient,
It is an object of the present invention to provide a sleep monitoring device capable of monitoring the health of a cared person or patient by processing the output signal.

[0012]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION According to the present invention, by monitoring the state of sleep during bedtime without giving physical and psychological pressure and anxiety to the cared person or patient, the cared person or patient can be monitored. Provided is a sleep monitoring device for performing health management.

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a body movement detecting means for detecting a body movement of a subject placed below a body of the subject, and a heart rate, a respiration rate, and a turnover frequency based on an output signal of the body movement detecting means. A sleep monitor comprising: signal extraction means for extracting at least one of a signal and a snoring signal; and a sleep monitor control device for detecting and recording physical data of the subject from the signal extracted by the signal extraction means. Device.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, the sleep monitor control device detects an abnormality of the subject by comparing the recorded physical data with a normal value of the subject stored in advance, and warns the abnormality of the subject. It is characterized by:

In a third aspect of the present invention, the sleep monitor control device detects the abnormality of the subject by comparing the newly recorded body data of the subject with the body data of the subject recorded so far. And a function of alarming an abnormality of the subject.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, as the body movement detecting means,
It is characterized by body movement detecting means comprising an air mat and a pressure sensor for detecting an internal pressure of the air mat.

[0017]

The body motion detecting means provided under the sleeping subject's body can collect the sleeping subject's physical data without putting a physical and mental burden on the subject.
The health condition of the subject can be monitored continuously, continuously and without difficulty.

[0018]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described. It should be noted that the present invention is not limited by this. FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram of a sleeping monitor apparatus according to the present invention. In FIG. 1, an air mat 11 is arranged under the body of a subject lying down. An appropriate amount of air is sealed in the air mat 11, and the air mat 11 is maintained at such a pressure that the air mat 11 is not crushed by the weight of the subject, and the air tube 1 connected to one end of an air chamber in the air mat 11.
The pressure inside the air mat 11 is detected by a slight differential pressure sensor 13 and an absolute pressure sensor 3 which are attached via the second. The output of the absolute pressure sensor 3 is sent to subject presence / absence detecting means 4 for confirming that the subject is on the bed, and the presence of the subject on the bed is confirmed. Air mat 1
1. The body movement detecting means 1 for detecting the body movement of the subject with the air tube 12 and the slight differential pressure sensor 13 is constituted.

In this embodiment, the method in which the air mat 11 is arranged directly under the body is shown.
The air mat 11 may be arranged below the bedding 7 when the presence of the air conditioner 1 is anxious and causes discomfort to the care receiver or the patient. The air mat 11 has a thickness of about 13 mm, and the pressure is maintained so that the thickness of the air mat 11 is about 4 to 6 mm when the subject lies on the air mat. It is also conceivable that the elastic body is reinforced so that the upper surface and the lower surface of the air mat 11 do not come into contact with each other with the weight of the subject.

The fine differential pressure sensor 13 is a condenser microphone type differential pressure gauge sensor, which detects a change in capacitance between a receiving pressure surface and a counter electrode caused by a change in pressure and detects a differential pressure. And the differential pressure sensor 1
3 measures the body movements of the cared person and the patient while sleeping.

While the differential pressure sensor 13 measures the fluctuation of the pressure, the absolute pressure sensor 3 literally measures the absolute pressure, and determines whether the subject is on the air mat 11 or not. It is provided to know what. The output signal of the absolute pressure sensor 3 is checked by the subject presence / absence determination means 4 for the presence of the subject. The output signal of the minute differential pressure sensor 13 is extracted by the signal extracting means 2 using a suitable filter circuit to obtain a heartbeat signal, a respiratory signal, a turning frequency signal, and a snoring signal. The signal output is processed in the sleep monitor control device and recorded as physical data. For example, the heart rate signal and the respiration signal are shaped as a function of time of the heart rate and the respiration rate. Also, from the turning signal and the snoring signal, the signal is shaped as a time function of the intensity and the period.

A display device 6 is connected to the sleep monitor control device 5, and can monitor the signal-shaped data in the form of a graph or digitized numerical information.
In addition, it is connected to the contact button 7 installed beside the bed of the cared person or the patient, so that it can be confirmed that the cared person or the patient is calling. Further, if a weak radio device is mounted on the sleep monitor control device 5, it becomes possible to transmit an alarm to the radio portable terminal device 8 held by a caregiver or a doctor when an abnormality occurs in the subject. .

A contact button 7 is arranged at a position near the bed of the subject and within reach of the subject. Contact button 7
Is used by the subject to notify the caregiver or doctor of the abnormality when the subject has an abnormality.

A procedure for monitoring the subject by measuring the body motion of the subject at bedtime will be described. The body movement of the subject is measured by body movement detecting means 1 composed of an air mat 11, a small differential pressure sensor 13, and an air tube 12 connecting these. The body movement of the subject causes a change in the pressure of the air inside the air mat 11 directly or through the bedding 9. The change in pressure at this time is detected by the slight differential pressure sensor 13 connected to the air mat 11, and the output signal is a signal obtained by combining body movements based on various causes.

From the detected signal waveform, the signal extracting means 2 extracts a body motion signal due to heartbeat, breathing, turning over, and snoring using an appropriate filter circuit or the like. Since these body motion signals have characteristics in frequency, amplitude, etc., extraction is not so difficult. Further, it is not always necessary to extract all of the above signals, and the extraction may be performed by selecting only some of them according to the physical condition of the subject.

Next, these signals are transmitted to the bed monitor control device 5.
To graph or digitize and record the subject's physical data. By comparing the subject's physical data with data obtained by the present apparatus or a periodic test, it is determined whether the subject has any abnormality or has no signs of harm to health. If there is an abnormality, the abnormality is displayed on the display device 6 and an alarm is transmitted to the wireless portable terminal device 8 carried by the caregiver or the doctor.

In order to determine the health condition of the subject, a normal value of the subject's physical data is measured in advance and recorded in the sleep monitor control device, and this physical data is compared with newly measured physical data. This is performed by determining that the level is abnormal when the level exceeds a predetermined level. As the normal value of the physical data of the subject, data measured by the apparatus of the present embodiment may be used, or physical data obtained by a periodic inspection may be used.

As another determination method, data measured by the present apparatus is recorded for a predetermined period such as weekly or monthly,
There is a method of comparing with newly obtained data, and it is possible not only to detect sudden body abnormalities, but also to grasp how the subject gradually changes.

The determination of the subject's abnormality is not uniformly determined by the subject's health condition.
It is possible to know the abnormality of the subject by a sudden decrease in the heart rate, a stop of the heart rate, the appearance of arrhythmia, and the like. In breathing, there is a method of monitoring the frequency of occurrence of apnea.

According to the present invention, since the body data can be always measured by the body movement detecting means while lying down, there is an advantage that the health condition of the subject can be monitored even during sleep. As a result, the patient's health can be monitored around the clock for a hospitalized patient or a bedridden elderly person.

[0031]

The conventional apparatus for measuring physical data requires wiring, which is difficult to apply during sleep of a cared person or a patient. In addition, even if wiring is unnecessary, a detector can be attached to a subject. It is essential to wear it, and these detectors and the like have exerted physical and mental pressure on the subject. As a result, there was a problem that a comfortable sleep could not be obtained and appropriate physical data could not be obtained.However, in the present invention, the physical data can be measured without wearing the detector on the body, so that the subject is physically and The subject's health condition can be constantly monitored by grasping the gradually occurring change of the subject without putting a mental burden.

Further, the sleeping monitor apparatus of the present invention can always monitor the body data by the body movement detecting means when lying down, so that the health condition of the subject can be monitored even during sleep. As a result, a hospitalized patient or a bedridden elderly person can monitor the subject's health status around the clock.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a conceptual diagram illustrating a configuration of a sleep monitoring device according to the present embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 REFERENCE SIGNS LIST 1 body movement detecting means 11 air mat 12 air tube 11 slight differential pressure sensor 2 signal extracting means 3 absolute pressure sensor 4 subject presence / absence detecting means 5 sleeping monitor control device 6 display device 7 communication button 8 wireless portable terminal device 9 bedding

 ──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on the front page F term (reference) 4C017 AA02 AA14 AA20 AC03 BB15 BC26 BD06 CC06 CC08 4C038 VA04 VB31 VB32 VB33 VC20 5C087 AA02 AA03 AA21 BB20 DD03 DD49 EE13 EE18 FF01 FF04 FF05 GG18 GG18 GG03

Claims (4)

[Claims] 1. A body movement detecting means for detecting a body movement of a subject placed under the body of the subject, a signal of a heart rate, a respiration rate, a turnover frequency, and a snoring signal from an output signal of the body movement detecting means. A sleep monitor apparatus comprising: a signal extraction unit that extracts at least one signal of the above; and a sleep monitor control device that detects and records physical data of the subject from the signal extracted by the signal extraction unit. 2. The sleep monitor control device detects an abnormality of the subject by comparing newly recorded physical data of the subject with physical data of the subject stored in advance. The sleep monitoring device according to claim 1, further comprising a function of giving an alarm. 3. The sleep monitor control device detects an abnormality of the subject by comparing the newly recorded physical data of the subject with the physical data of the subject recorded so far. The sleep monitoring device according to claim 1, further comprising a function of alarming an abnormality of the sleep. 4. A sleep monitor according to claim 1, wherein said body movement detecting means is a body movement detecting means comprising an air mat and a pressure sensor for detecting an internal pressure of said air mat. apparatus.