The current practice is very tedious and time consuming
as it typically involves the medical professionals and
caregivers having to manually conduct periodic checks
leading to unnecessary visitations and delayed response.
Furthermore, it is infrequent and may miss onset of crisis
event. The use of current commercial systems also faces
lots of operational drawbacks for continuous monitoring as
they usually involve the patients wearing specialized
probes that will constraint their movement and introduce
some level of discomfort. Hence, only selected patients in
Received August 1, 2009; accepted August 8, 2009
E-mail: haoemily@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
Front. Optoelectron. China 2010, 3(1): 78–83
DOI 10.1007/s12200-009-0066-0
critical conditions to be monitored will be wearing the
probes. The need to wear probes also limits the practical
mass deployment and study on potential clinical problems
in patients such as sleep apnea.