Keynote: Medical IoT Devices in the Age of COVID-19

The world has been in combat with COVID- 19 since December 2019. Around the world, physicians have been documenting their experiences under the heavy siege of the pandemic, emphasizing the presence of silent hypoxia and hypoxemia. This deceptive side of COVID-19 leads to deficient levels of oxygen even in patients who appear to be breathing normally. Under normal conditions, these levels of oxygen are far below those that cause death. As in the COVID-19 example, respiratory failure is unpredictable in nature and can become life-threatening in a matter of minutes. Changes in vital sign parameters often reveal important markers of the onset of a deterioration in health. Quantifying the real-time dynamics and physiological distributions of blood gas measurements of CO2 and O2 and other respiratory parameters are imperative to both clinicians and researchers. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance to have the ability to sense and measure respiratory parameters in a continuous, reliable, and accurate manner across different conditions. Remote and continuous monitoring of respiratory parameters with a miniaturized, noninvasive, and comfortable device is essential, not only for known respiratory diseases, including COPD and sleep apnea in adults and babies, but for uprising diseases as COVID-19. The talk covers emerging devices for respiration parameters monitoring, transforming bulky benchtop instruments into miniaturized, next-generation medical IoT devices. The talk also explores currently available technologies, with a short glance back to the evolution of respiratory parameter sensing systems.