Patent: Monitoring of a Sleeping Subject

Chronic diseases are the No.1 causes of death and disability worldwide and by 2020, we would witness an increase in death rates by 73% and global disease rates by 60% due to these. The death and disease rates are accelerating at jet speed and 79% of all deaths occurring in developing countries are due to chronic diseases. Any condition that lasts for more than a year limiting dairy routines and requiring medical attention can be classified as a chronic disease and the four prominent ones include cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, type 2 diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These diseases are not a curse of nature but the irony of nurture! They are the result of highly preventable risk factors such as overweight/obesity, smoking, increased blood pressure levels, high cholesterol, improper lifestyle routines, unhealthy eating habits that include meagre consumption of fruits and vegetables and excessive alcohol use. So, if you have any, many or all of these risk factors does it mean that you have a chronic disease? Maybe, maybe not! We cannot be sure but the chances are that your risk for any of these diseases is extremely high in such scenarios.
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Getting yourself tested, blood checked and levels monitored seems to be the right way to safeguard your health but not many who have paved way for these risk factors in life are active enough to get themselves tested every once a while! Chronic diseases are expressed by episodic worsening of clinical symptoms. Starting the individual on preventive treatment is extremely important to minimize overall side effects, reduce required medications and dosages and curb death rates. So, when do we start preventive treatment? As soon as the individual presents with clinical symptoms as this prevents advancements of the disease to a point of no-return, avoids further worsening of the clinical symptoms and reverses the pathophysiological process. Hence, detecting the clinical symptoms as early as possible and watching for pre-episodic indicators help in making the preventive treatment as effective as possible for any of the chronic diseases.

Coming to identifying pre-episodic indicators, its well-known that most of the chronic diseases cause changes in vital signs such as heartbeat and breathing-for example, respiratory problems such as asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis and sleep apnea directly involve changes in these vital signs. Diseases such as diabetes, epilepsy and heart conditions affect cardiac and breathing activity. Sometimes, coughing and restlessness while sleeping are also indicative of certain other important conditions. Many of the conditions trigger abnormal breathing and heartbeat patterns while staying awake or asleep and this serves as an important platform to identify the diseases during the initial stages with the help of a device or something similar. The invention patented here helps you exactly in this regard. It provides the individual with an option to monitor for the occurrence or recurrence of a chronic illness, monitor for vital signs for detecting the illness and also in the case of certain applications it also suggests treatments in the form of therapy or medication.
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The invention is not an application simply to identify chronic diseases but also is helpful for healthy individuals who would love to improve their well-being by optimizing long-term fitness and health, monitoring devices such as smartphones and alarm clocks to minimize their intrusion while maximizing their use in our daily lives and enable the subject to lead a better quality of life.

Prevention is better than cure and this invention follows the proverb to the dot enabling individuals to prevent the delirious consequences of chronic illnesses by identifying them in the initial stages and curbing their hazardous side effects. The invention provides an apparatus for use on a subject who shares the bed with another person and this apparatus consists of a motion sensor to detect motion of the subject without detecting his/her clothes, without contacting the subject and without viewing the subject. There is also a control unit set to identify and differentiate the motion of the subject from that of the second subject. The control unit analyzes the components of the motion signal that were generated in response to the motion of the subject and gives a suitable output response henceforth. For complete details of the invention which was published on 18/12/2014 please refer any of the link given below:

United States Patent & trademark Office: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=41&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=nutrition&s2=fitness&OS=nutrition+AND+fitness&RS=nutrition+AND+fitness

World Intellectual Property Organization: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=US128466036&tab=NATIONALBIBLIO&office=&prevFilter=&sortOption=Relevance&queryString=ALLTXT%3A%28Monitoring+a+sleeping+subject%29&recNum=3&maxRec=23251
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European Patent Office: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?DB=EPODOC&II=1&ND=3&adjacent=true&locale=en_EP&FT=D&date=20160310&CC=WO&NR=2016035073A1&KC=A1