抄録
The long term goal of our research is to develop an in-car health screening instrument, based on a novel approach for physiological measurement, in order to contribute to much-needed efforts aimed at achieving safer driving. We describe here a feasibility study in which a system was constructed to derive cardiac indices non-invasively and simultaneously using a finger cuff. Specifically, the instrument measures blood pressure (BP), pulse rate (PR), normalized pulse volume (NPV) reflecting alpha-adrenergic sympathetic activity, and finger-artery elasticity index (FEI). The instrument's measurement process has two phases:firstly, cuff pressure is maintained at 30 mmHg to measure the NPV and PR;secondly, whilst applying a gradual change in counter-pressure, the BP and FEI are measured by application of the volume-oscillometric method. We tested a prototype instrument in 5 healthy male and female volunteers (age 21, 22, 36, 37, 49 years) during two weeks day-to-day living, including a 33-hour period of total sleep deprivation as physiological challenge. The results indicated that with sleep deprivation there appear to be relatively large physiological changes. In conclusion, the prototype system we have developed has allowed the periodic collection of physiological data in a convenient and expeditious way without any failure, demonstrating the possibility to detect an adverse effect on health. Further investigations will be needed in a larger group of subjects with a variety of real environmental conditions.
