Development of a unique and innovative health tracker. Accurate and reliable mouth mask less breathing and metabolism analysis.

With ageing, a sustainable workforce is major challenge. Can the workload of physical active workers be measured reliable and accurate?

The Dutch population is getting older which causes problems in healthcare and on the labour market, among other things: more people are struggling with a chronic or old-age disease, which increases the pressure on healthcare, and there are not enough young people to take over the vacancies of retired elderly people. It is therefore important that people can continue working for as long and as healthily as possible, and not drop out prematurely due to, for example, overload in the workplace. In this project, a unique and innovative Health Tracker is being developed and validated that monitors the physical burden of the user in an accessible and reliable manner.

The collaboration between the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), and the University of Groningen (RUG), Relitech, Relitech Development, Lode, Umaco, ProCare, aXtion, Life Cooperative and HTRIC, leads to the development of the Health Tracker in this project: a non-invasive, portable device that monitors the physical burden of the user in an accessible and reliable manner. Based on the measurement data obtained, it can be determined whether certain activities are too strenuous for an employee or patient.

The Health Tracker is unique and innovative and is the only one that can measure the physical burden without breathing resistance and restriction of freedom of movement. This ensures improved user-friendliness and increased reliability of the measurement. The Health Tracker consists of a headset with which a breathing and metabolism analysis is performed, combined with ECG and motion sensors. The accurate non-consuming O2 sensors, developed by Relitech, play an important role in this. The sensors work on the basis of heat dissipation (CO2) and hard polymer technology (O2), making them easily scalable and inexpensive. Thanks to the smart algorithm, corrections can be made for the interference of ambient air and any artefacts. With the smart addition of ECG and motion, the heart rate and activity can also be monitored during the measurement. This allows a more accurate and reliable determination of how the effort affects the user's resilience. The device will be tested and validated by the UMCG on both healthy people and patients, in a controlled and relevant (work) environment.

Collaborations

A Groningen consortium of knowledge institutions University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and University of Groningen, and companies (SME’s) Relitech, Relitech Development, Lode, Umaco, ProCare, aXtion, Life Cooperative, and Health Technology Research & Innovation Cluster (HTRIC).