Our Services3 - Personal Fitness Monitoring

Personal Fitness Monitoring

Personal fitness is a market segment showing high potential for use of wireless sensor technology outside as well as in the home and in health fitness centers.

Monitoring and Tracking Fitness Level Scenario

This use case focuses on tracking the fitness level or progress made by an individual. A number of parameters that the individual wishes to monitor are recorded as the individual performs his/her workout routine. For example, while running on a treadmill, the individual monitors his/her heart rate, temperature and blood oxygen level. This information, obtained from medical sensors that are worn by the individual, are securely streamed to a sensor data publisher unit and displayed on the treadmill’s console in real time along with other performance information provided by the treadmill. Additionally, the sensor data publisher sends the information to a database server for record keeping. Note that the information need not be sent in real time, but may be collected and transmitted after the workout routine ends. After the workout, the individual can review a history of these parameters to track and analyze their fitness level.

In this use case, the application polls each sensor type at a different rate. For example, the application would poll the temperature sensor two to four times a minute and the pulse monitor twice per second. The latency requirement for this application should be less than one second.

Personalized Fitness Schedule Scenario

This scenario focuses on personalization of the fitness schedule of an individual. The schedule to be followed by the individual can be entered by a trainer or the individual. For example, training for a marathon could include running on a treadmill according to a schedule designed by his/her trainer. For each training day, the trainer schedules the distance, the pace, and the maximum heart rate at which the individual is to train. The trainer would also like to monitor the individual’s respiration pattern. While the distance and the pace are provided by the treadmill, the heart rate and the respiration are monitored by wireless medical devices worn by the individual.

The information collected by these medical devices is securely streamed to a data publisher unit and displayed on the treadmill’s display panel. Additionally, the gateway would also securely send the information to an IT Platform for record keeping into medical database. If the heart rate spikes to a value that is higher than the value that is set by the schedule, the medical device communicates with the treadmill’s control unit to reduce the workout gradually until the heart rate falls again in the preset interval.

Alternatively, the medical device might simply send an alarm to the data publisher unity. Upon receiving this alarm, the data publisher unity will initiate the communication with the treadmill’s control. Yet another possibility would be for the application to determine when the heart rate is above the preset maximum value and to initiate itself a command to the treadmill’s control without involving the medical device.