WPI Is Enabling Non-Invasive Patient Monitoring

According to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the future of medicine is the ability to remotely monitor patients in a simple and accurate way. The new sensor that they’ve developed does just that. It allows thousands of different patients, particularly babies, to be monitored at once in an easy, effective way, and they’re doing so with the help of Cadence tools.

When babies are under medical care, they may appear healthy on the outside, but sometimes their oxygen or carbon dioxide levels are lower than they appear. Those are important variables to determine their response to therapy and if the support they’re being given is adequate. To provide the best care to those babies, doctors need easy access to those variables frequently and in a non-invasive manner.

WPI is building monitors that provide more accessible data, give all the variables more accurately, and are more family-friendly. With WPI’s monitors, babies don’t need to remain tethered to a machine to determine whether the support they’re being given is adequate.

Since WPI’s monitor is a variable device, they have limited power and area resources available. The first thing the team had to do was study the signal characteristics since the hardware would be tailored to the needs of the signal. They used Cadence’s Virtuoso Studio, Spectre technology, and PSpice and PVS tools to characterize the electrical design, lay out the physical design, and verify the electrical and physical design in every step.

Ulkuhan Guler, an associate professor at WPI, said, “Cadence helps us to design the next generation of biomedical devices, which are miniaturized, smart, wireless, and can measure from inside and outside of the body. This will reduce the burden on healthcare, and also, this will help doctors to monitor their patients from the comfort of their home.” Learn more about how WPI is enabling accurate, non-invasive, and remote patient monitoring with Cadence.

“Designed with Cadence” is a series of videos that showcases creative products and technologies that are accelerating industry innovation using Cadence tools and solutions. For more Designed with Cadence videos, check out the Cadence website and YouTube channel.