Transforming Digital Healthcare Through Video Vital Sign Analysis

Global events over the past few years have disrupted how healthcare professionals approach the measurement and monitoring of a patient’s vital signs. New regulations around sanitation and the use of personal protection equipment  pose a challenge to healthcare providers who require new methods to safely measure a patient’s vital signs, or to triage patients in an emergency room situation faster.

Today, innovations in sensors, signal and image processing, and machine learning allow providers to use video analysis to measure vital signs such as heart rate, oxygenation, and respiratory rate. New methods for unlocking data from video are available, providing insights beyond what the eye can see, but also reducing the need for healthcare equipment such as wearable devices, thermometers, and other physical vital sign measurement gear.

Leading in this space is Presage Technologies, which has developed its Vitals by Video platform to offer continuous, passive vital sign measurements for healthcare provider s and patients. Using any camera – including those found in webcams and smartphones – the platform can identify vital signs such as heart rate and respiration data, as well as the quality of these signals . It does so by measuring minute, nearly invisible color changes to a patient’s face between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood when the heart beats.

The pandemic introduced a great need for a safer way to measure vital signs that kept both patients and providers safe in their environment. This caused a demand for remote healthcare and telemedicine, which Presage’s technology enables. Presage’s explainable algorithms can detect and measure changes in dynamic situations, for example, while on a treadmill or in low-light conditions.

Rather than develop their own specific hardware device, Presage provides access for other developers to use the platform in their own applications, devices, or use cases. For example, the platform is easily integrated into a baby monitor, allowing a manufacturer to give parents additional data on their baby’s health that goes beyond just audio and video. In another example, neonatal intensive care units that already use video cameras to monitor babies can now extract vital signs from the cameras instead of attaching wires and cables and other sensors to the newborn patients. With the technology embedded into a smartphone or app, military doctors or emergency first responders can measure vital signs for field triage purposes. Because the use cases are endless, Presage wants to allow other companies to partner with them to come up with the right solution for their specific device or app.

Developers can utilize Presage’s technology in several ways. The platform can be directly embedded into a video camera, such as a baby monitor or other piece of hardware, or it can be integrated indirectly by making an API call to Presage. The company is making its API available for free  to developers who want to test the Vitals by Video platform for themselves.

“The API is nice when people are figuring out what their use case is, because it allows us to quickly jump in and look at any issues they’re having,” says Rick Getz, Chief Technology Officer at Presage. “We can then walk them through the process before we hit the large-scale production of putting it onto an individual device or developing it for a specific application.”

To learn more about how developers can integrate video vital sign analysis into their digital healthcare strategy, visit Presage Technologies here.