Engineers Develop an RFID-Like System for Monitoring Your Vitals Without Physical Contact

You’ve been to a physician and know the process: you sit in a waiting room for an unreasonable amount of time, just to see a nurse who measures your vital signs. Uncomfortable blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes are used to get your readings, and then it’s back to waiting for the doctor to see you. Wouldn’t it be great if those vitals signs could just be monitored while you’re still in the waiting room?

A new system created by engineers from Cornell University may finally make that possible by using RFID-like technology that can wirelessly measure your vital signs. Just like existing RFID systems, this can be accomplished using cheap sensors that don’t require their own power supplies. A central reader powers the sensors wirelessly, while simultaneously gathering data from them.

Those sensors are simple tags that can be applied to the skin, and which emit radio waves to detect motion. That motion is enough to determine stats like blood pressure, heart rate, and breath rate. The reader itself can gather data from hundreds of the inexpensive tags, which means an entire waiting room full of people can be monitored while they’re waiting to see the doctor.