JP2015012910A - Biological information collection system and pillow - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a biological information collection system capable of acquiring biological information without imposing a burden on a user.SOLUTION: A pillow 10 includes a sensor for automatically acquiring biological information on a user (subject) of the pillow 10 to store the biological information in a biological information recording server 30. Thereby, a burden on the subject can be dramatically reduced as compared with a conventional method where the subject must operate a measurement tool by himself/herself to acquire his/her biological information. Further, acquiring the subject's biological information during a sleep period makes it possible to continuously acquire the biological information for a long time, which makes it possible to more accurately grasp a health state of the subject as compared with a grasp based on fragmentary biological information obtained for a short time.

Description

  The present invention relates to a system for collecting and recording biological information of a human body and a pillow used in such a system.

  In Japan, aging is progressing at an unprecedented speed, and reducing the financial burden related to medical care and nursing care is an urgent issue. To that end, it is more important to extend the period in which people can live a healthy and independent life than to simply extend their life expectancy, and it also meets the needs of ordinary consumers.

  In order to support a healthy and independent life, a system for centrally managing data on the health of each individual is being studied. By collecting basic vital data (biological information) such as individual blood pressure, pulse rate, and body temperature and managing them centrally, it can be used for hospital treatment, health checkup, nursing care, rehabilitation, and dietary habits. This is because prevention of health and promotion of health can be achieved.

  As a method to collect vital data centrally, a method is generally adopted in which biological information such as a sphygmomanometer or a weight scale is transferred to a mobile terminal and sent from a mobile terminal to a server on the network (such as the Internet) for recording. Has been. However, in this method, the subject must bother to operate a measuring instrument such as a sphygmomanometer or a weight scale to acquire biological information, and performing such an operation every day is a heavy burden on the subject. is there. In addition, humans always have time to sleep during the day, but conventional methods that require the measurement instrument to be operated by a subject cannot collect valuable biological information during sleep.

  This invention is made | formed in view of this situation, The objective is to provide the biometric information collection system which can collect biometric information, without putting a burden on a user.

  A biological information collection system according to a first aspect of the present invention is arranged inside or outside a pillow, and acquires a biological information of a user of the pillow, and collects the biological information from the sensor unit. A biometric information recording server for recording.

  Preferably, the sensor unit includes pressure of the user's head applied to one or a plurality of locations of the pillow, vibration of the pillow, temperature of the pillow, sound generated by the user, blood pressure of the user, And at least 1 of the said user's brain wave is acquired as said biometric information.

  Preferably, the sensor unit includes a wireless communication unit that transmits the acquired biological information as a wireless signal.

  Preferably, the information processing apparatus includes a relay device that temporarily records the biological information transmitted as a radio signal from the sensor unit and periodically transfers the recorded biological information to the biological information recording server.

  Preferably, when the biometric information recording server receives a disclosure request for disclosure of the recorded biometric information, the biometric information recording server performs an authentication process of the disclosure request source, and determines that the disclosure request is permitted in the authentication process. The biometric information is transmitted to the disclosure request source.

  In the pillow according to the second aspect of the present invention, a sensor unit that acquires biometric information of a user is disposed inside or outside, and the biometric information acquired by the sensor unit is sent to a predetermined biometric information recording server. Configured to transmit.

  According to the present invention, the biological information is acquired by the sensor provided on the pillow and recorded in the biological information recording server, so that the biological information can be collected without imposing a burden on the user.

It is a figure which shows an example of a structure of the biometric information collection system which concerns on embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of a structure of the pillow which concerns on embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of a structure of a biometric information recording server. It is a figure which shows an example of a structure of the biometric information collection system which concerns on other embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows an example of a structure of a relay apparatus.

Hereinafter, a biological information collection system according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an example of a biological information collection system according to an embodiment of the present invention. The system shown in FIG. 1 includes a pillow 10 that includes a sensor that acquires biological information, and a biological information recording server 30 that collects and records biological information from the pillow 10.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating an example of the pillow 10 according to the embodiment of the present invention, and represents a cross section of the pillow 10. The pillow 10 shown in the example of FIG. 2A has a pillow body 11 and a sensor unit 15 disposed inside the pillow body 11. The sensor unit 15 includes various sensors that acquire biological information of a user who has placed his head on the pillow body 11.

  For example, the sensor unit 15 includes a pressure sensor that detects the pressure of the user's head applied to the pillow 10. Based on the information of the pressure sensor, the time when the user's head is placed on the pillow 10 (sleeping time) and the time when the user's head is separated from the pillow 10 (wake-up time) are detected, and the sleep period The time and the number of times of getting up to go to the toilet etc. in the middle of is detected. Further, by providing pressure sensors at a plurality of positions of the pillow 10, the time and number of times of turning over are detected from the information of the pressure sensors.

  The sensor unit 15 may include a vibration sensor that detects vibration generated in the pillow 10. Based on the information of the vibration sensor, it is estimated whether or not the user's head has been stationary for a predetermined time or longer, thereby estimating the time of falling asleep.

  The sensor unit 15 may include a temperature sensor that detects the temperature of the user's head placed on the pillow 10. Based on the temperature of the head detected by the temperature sensor, the body temperature of the user is estimated.

  The sensor unit 15 and a humidity sensor that detects the humidity inside the pillow 10 may be provided. Based on the detection result of the humidity sensor, the state of sweating of the user during the sleep period is estimated.

  The sensor unit 15 may include a microphone that inputs sound generated by the user. Based on the sound input by the microphone, information on the presence / absence of snoring, its size, length, and the nature of snoring can be obtained.

  The sensor unit 15 may include a sphygmomanometer that detects the blood pressure of the user and an electroencephalograph that detects the electroencephalogram of the user. For example, these measuring instruments are mounted on the user's arm or head outside the pillow body 11 and are connected to the main board of the sensor unit 15 by a signal cable.

  The sensor unit 15 includes a wireless communication unit that transmits biological information detected by each of the sensors described above as a wireless signal. This wireless communication unit performs wireless communication with a base station 5 provided in a communication network such as a mobile phone, and accesses the biometric information recording server 30 via a communication network 9 such as the Internet.

In addition, you may arrange | position the sensor part 15 to the cover 15 attached to the outer side of the pillow main body 11, as shown in FIG.2 (B). Thereby, the pillow main body 11 can be replaced | exchanged easily.
The sensor unit 15 may be removable from the cover 15. As a result, the cover 15 can be easily replaced with another one.

  The biometric information recording server 30 is a computer that can communicate via the communication network 9 such as the Internet, and records and manages the biometric information sent from the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10. The biometric information recording server 30 also performs a process of providing biometric information in response to a request from another computer connected to the communication network 9.

  FIG. 3 is a diagram illustrating an example of the configuration of the biological information recording server 30. The biometric information recording server 30 illustrated in FIG. 3 includes a processing unit 31, a communication unit 32, a storage unit 34, a work memory 35, an operation unit 36, and a display 37.

  The communication unit 32 communicates with the wireless communication unit of the sensor unit 15 according to the control of the processing unit 31 and receives biological information detected by each sensor of the sensor unit 15. For example, the communication unit 32 performs signal processing and control for performing communication conforming to a predetermined standard via the communication network 9, modulation / demodulation of signals transmitted by wire or wireless, data encoding / decoding, packet Processing and transmission / reception timing adjustment.

  The operation unit 36 is a user interface for converting a user command / instruction into an electric signal or the like and inputting it to the processing unit 31, and includes, for example, a keyboard, a mouse, a touch panel sensor, a key bat, an operation button, and the like.

  The display 37 displays an image corresponding to the display signal input from the processing unit 31. For example, the display 13 includes a display device such as a liquid crystal display, an EL panel display, or a CRT, and a graphic controller that processes an image signal supplied to the display device.

The storage unit 34 is a device that stores programs and data for causing the processing unit 31 to execute processing. For example, a nonvolatile storage device (hard disk, flash memory, magneto-optical disk) that retains data even when the power is off. Equipment). The storage unit 34 stores, for example, an operating system, BIOS, application program, and the like.
The work memory 35 is a device that stores program codes executed in the processing unit 31, data temporarily used in the course of processing, and the like, and includes a relatively high-speed storage device such as a DRAM or an SRAM. .

  The processing unit 31 is a circuit that executes processing in accordance with a program stored in the storage unit 34, and controls the overall operation of the biological information recording server 30. For example, the processing unit 21 includes a processor (CPU) that performs processing based on a program, a bus for exchanging data with peripheral hardware, a bus bridge circuit that controls the bus, a cache memory, and the like. The processing unit 31 sequentially executes the instructions of the program while appropriately storing the processing target and mid-processing data in the work memory 35.

  When receiving the biological information transmitted from the wireless communication unit of the pillow 10, the processing unit 31 stores the biological information in the storage unit 34 in association with the identification information (personal ID) of each user. For example, identification information (pillow ID) for each individual pillow 10 is registered in the storage unit of the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10, and this pillow ID is attached to the biological information transmitted from the pillow 10. . When receiving the biological information and the pillow ID from the pillow 10, the processing unit 31 refers to the pillow ID and personal ID association table stored in advance in the storage unit 34 and acquires a personal ID corresponding to the pillow ID. The acquired personal ID and biometric information are stored in the storage unit 34 in association with each other.

  Further, when receiving a request for disclosure of biological information from another computer via the communication network 9, the processing unit 31 performs processing for providing biological information in response to the request. For example, the processing unit 31 has a function as a Web server, and provides Web page configuration data (HTML data, image data, etc.) to other computers connected via the communication network 9. I do.

  When the processing unit 31 receives a request for disclosure of biometric information from a computer that accesses a Web page, the processing unit 31 performs authentication processing of the computer (for example, confirmation of an ID and a password). If the processing unit 31 determines that the disclosure request is permitted in this authentication process, the processing unit 31 generates Web page configuration data for displaying biometric information and provides it to the requesting computer. Thereby, the user himself / herself, his / her family, medical personnel, caregivers, and the like can grasp the individual's health condition in a specific and detailed manner.

  The processing unit 31 displays a time-series biometric information graph on a web page that discloses biometric information. For example, the processing unit 31 arbitrarily changes a graph form, display contents (type of biological information), a display period width, a time span, and the like according to a user setting.

  The operation of the above-described biological information collection system will be described.

  The sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10 monitors whether the pillow 10 is in use, based on information such as pressure and vibration applied to the pillow 10, for example. If it determines with the use of the pillow 10 having been started, the sensor part 15 will transmit the biometric information detected by each sensor to the biometric information recording server 30 at any time.

  When receiving the biological information from the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10, the biological information recording server 30 records this biological information together with the time information in association with the personal ID of the user. The biological information recording server 30 specifies a single sleep period (sleeping time and wake-up time) based on a series of biological information received from the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10 and the recording time thereof, and during the sleeping period Calculate the number of wake-ups and the number of wake-ups

  When the biometric information recording server 30 receives a biometric information disclosure request from another computer accessed via the communication network 9, the biometric information recording server 30 performs authentication processing (such as confirmation of an ID and password) on the computer. If it is determined that the disclosure request is permitted in the authentication process, the biometric information recording server 30 provides the computer with biometric information as, for example, Web content.

  As described above, according to the present embodiment, the biological information of the user (subject) of the pillow 10 is automatically acquired by the sensor provided in the pillow 10 and recorded in the biological information recording server 30. Therefore, it is possible to significantly reduce the burden on the subject as compared with the conventional method in which the subject must operate the measuring instrument himself and acquire biological information. In addition, since biological information is collected during the sleep period, it is not necessary to spend time for collecting biological information, and the burden on the subject can be reduced.

  In addition, according to the present embodiment, since the biological information of the subject is acquired during the sleep period, it is possible to obtain the biological information continuously over a long period of time, compared to short-term fragmentary biological information. Thus, it becomes possible to grasp the health condition of the subject more accurately.

  Pillows are indispensable for humans to use every day, and have the property of being close to the head and face that are most important to humans. Also, the pillow continues to touch my head for a very long time, about one third of the day. Therefore, it can be said that the pillow is extremely suitable as a place to acquire information on the human body.

  As mentioned above, although one Embodiment of this invention was described, this invention is not limited to said form, Various modifications are included.

  In the biological information collection system shown in FIG. 1, an example is given in which biological information is transmitted from the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10 to the biological information recording server 30 as needed, but the present invention is not limited to this. In another embodiment of the present invention, for example, as shown in FIG. 4, the biological information acquired by the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10 is temporarily recorded in the relay device 20, and the biological information is transmitted from the relay device 20 via the communication network 9. Biometric information may be transmitted to the recording server 30.

  FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an example of the configuration of the relay device 20. The relay device 20 includes a processing unit 21, a communication unit, and the like, as components similar to the processing unit 31, the communication unit 32, the storage unit 34, the work memory 35, the operation unit 36, and the display 37 in the biological information recording server 30 illustrated in FIG. 22, a storage unit 24, a work memory 25, an operation unit 26, and a display 27. In addition, the relay device 20 includes a communication unit 32 that performs wireless communication with the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10 using a communication method such as a general wireless LAN.

The processing unit 31 of the relay device 20 specifies and specifies a single sleep period (sleeping time and wake-up time) based on, for example, a series of biological information received from the sensor unit 15 of the pillow 10 and its recording time. The biometric information for the one sleep period is collectively transmitted to the biometric information recording server 30. In addition, the processing unit 31 calculates the number of times of waking up and the number of times of turning up during the sleeping period based on the biological information (such as information on the pressure sensor) in the specified one sleep period, and the result is stored in the biological information recording server 30. You may send it.
As described above, by providing the relay device 20 that temporarily stores the biological information, it is possible to effectively prevent the biological information from being lost when a communication failure occurs in the communication network 9.

  In the above-described embodiment, an example in which authentication processing is performed in order to acquire biometric information recorded in the biometric information recording server 30 is described, but the present invention is not limited to this example. For example, when there is prior permission from the subject (the user of the pillow 10), the biometric information processed so that the individual is not specified may be disclosed to the public.

The biometric information recording server 30 analyzes biometric information (vital data) collected from a large number of subjects as so-called big data, and relates to biometric information of various diseases obtained by the analysis of the big data. By referring to features and trends, each subject's physical condition changes and signs of illness may be determined based on biological information. For example, the biometric information recording server 30 may determine the physical condition change or illness sign of each subject based on the biometric information, and automatically generate a report of advice based on the determination result. Alternatively, the biological information recording server 30 may perform such a determination for each group or region, and automatically generate an advice or a statistical trend report based on the determination result.
In addition, when the biological information recording server 30 determines that a predetermined abnormality has occurred based on the biological information, the biological information recording server 30 automatically notifies a warning message to the subject's family, an organization such as a hospital, You may make it notify the content of the abnormality.

  The biometric information recording server 30 may determine not only the determination of the health state as described above but also whether or not the shape, size, etc. of the pillow suits the user based on the characteristics / trends of the biometric information.

  Furthermore, the biometric information recording server 30 may be configured to set a biometric information viewable range (only the person, the person and the family, the person and the family and the medical personnel, etc.) for each user, and save biometric information. You may enable it to set a period restriction and expansion for every user. In this case, for example, the biological information recording server 30 may limit the setting for each user as described above according to a plan (pay) that the user subscribes to.

  Such a biological information recording server 30 can be realized by, for example, cloud computing. The biological information recording server 30 may realize part or all of the functions by a single computer or may be realized by cooperating a plurality of computers.

The pillow according to the present invention can incorporate various sensors for examining the state of the subject's body in addition to the sensors mentioned in the above embodiment. For example, the pillow according to the present invention detects the state of the head and skin, the state of the scalp, the state of hair growth, etc. by incorporating a sensor on the surface thereof, and transmits the detection result to the biological information recording server. It may be.
Further, by extending the pillow sensor part to a mattress or a futon, in addition to detecting vital data with the pillow, it is possible to perform measurements related to the whole body such as weight and body fat.

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 5 ... Base station, 9 ... Communication network, 10 ... Pillow, 11 ... Pillow body, 12 ... Cover, 15 ... Sensor part, 20 ... Relay device, 30 ... Biological information recording server, 21, 31 ... Processing part, 22, 23 32, communication unit, 24, 34, storage unit, 25, 35 ... working memory, 26, 36 ... operation unit, 27, 37 ... display.

Claims (6)

A sensor unit that is disposed inside or outside the pillow and acquires biological information of the user of the pillow;
A biological information collection system comprising: a biological information recording server that collects and records the biological information from the sensor unit. The sensor unit is the pressure of the user's head applied to one or more locations of the pillow, the vibration of the pillow, the temperature of the pillow, the sound emitted by the user, the blood pressure of the user, and the Obtaining at least one of the user's brain waves as the biological information;
The biological information collection system according to claim 1. The sensor unit includes a wireless communication unit that transmits the acquired biological information as a wireless signal.
The biological information collection system according to claim 1 or 2. A relay device that temporarily records the biological information transmitted as a wireless signal from the sensor unit and periodically transfers the recorded biological information to the biological information recording server;
The biological information collection system according to claim 3. When the biometric information recording server receives a disclosure request for disclosure of the recorded biometric information, the biometric information recording server performs authentication processing of the disclosure request source, and determines that the disclosure request is permitted in the authentication processing. To the disclosure requester,
The biological information collection system according to any one of claims 1 to 4.   A pillow configured to transmit a biometric information acquired by a sensor unit that acquires biometric information of a user to a predetermined biometric information recording server.