Supplemental Oxygen Therapy Monitoring System

Supplemental Oxygen Therapy Monitoring System

Yasameen Al Mharib, Vian Khalaf, Joseph F. Santacroce, and Douglas E. Dow

College of Engineering and Technology

Wentworth Institute of Technology

Boston, Massachusetts

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Cells and tissues require a sufficient supply of oxygen for survival. During periods of energy consuming activities, more oxygen is consumed. An insufficient supply of oxygen to the cells and tissues may result from impairments of the respiration or oxygen transport systems, such as lung disease, heart disease, and anemia. Supplemental oxygen has wide-spread clinical use for increasing the oxygen content in the lungs, and thus increasing blood oxygen saturation. Supplemental oxygen typically involves an oxygen tank, tubes to the nasal intake, and a valve that controls the rate of oxygen flow. The value is manually adjusted by medical staff, care giver, or the patient. Such a manually adjusted system may result in an mismatch between the oxygen flow rate and the amount necessary to maintain the proper level of oxygen blood saturation. Such a mismatch could be due to several reasons, including oxygen tank depletion, accidental blockage or repositioning of the tube, lung respiration becoming less effective due to changes in body position or effort, or an increase in physical activities. For example, a person with breathing difficulty might need more oxygen when they are walking up a set of stairs, an episode of coughing or even laughing. An insufficient supply of oxygen risks in cell damage and hypoxia. An excessive supply of oxygen also has disadvantages, such as risk of oxygen toxicity and depletion of the oxygen tank faster than necessary. The purpose of this project is to develop a system that will monitor oxygen blood saturation using a pulse oximeter and then make suggestions for any adjustment to the oxygen flow rate. Alarms will be set to go off when the oxygen blood saturation level becomes too low or too high.The function of this monitoring and alarm system will be tested and compared with a clinical patient monitoring device. If the system provides suggestions and alerts that would improve the flow of oxygen, then this design could potentially be incorporated in a closed loop control system to automatically adjust the flow of oxygen. Such a design would work toward improving the match of oxygen flow to physiological demands, and contribute to improving the health of many patients.