Invention: Wireless Body Sensing

A Philips patent application was recently made public on the Newscientist Invention Blog. The application describes wireless body sensing where patients have to be monitored. A number of wireless sensors are attached to the body and can be remotely monitored at some computer. The advantage being the patient is monitored without the being attached by wires. This is especially important for long term monitoring.

The patent application can be found here.

The priority date is Feb 24, 2006. Note claim 1, the most important claim says

"1. A communication device adapted for attachment to the body of a wearer so as to form part of a body area network ("BAN") comprising a body coupled communication ("BCC") device, and a short-range radio device, the device including means for detecting other similar communication devices on the wearer using BCC, and means for establishing a wireless network with other such devices using their short range radios."

Now lets go to Harvard University and look at the CodeBlue project (Wireless Sensor Networks for Medical Care). The earliest publication was October 28, 2003. If we look at the document "Sensor Networks for Medical Care" posted on the web site, published April 2005, claim 1 in the application is fully described. Not only described but a prototype was built. Directly from the paper:

"We have experimentally validated the prototype on our 30-node sensor network testbed, demonstrating its scalability and robustness as the number of simultaneous queries, data rates, and transmitting sensors are varied. We also study the effect of node mobility, fairness across multiple simultaneous paths, and patterns of packet loss, confirming the system’s ability to maintain stable routes despite variations in node location and data rate."

I did not review all the papers on the CodeBlue project but its pretty clear from reading one paper, claim 1 is invalid. Since they built and tested exactly claim 1.

Claim 2 of the patent says

"A communication device according to claim 1 in which the short-range radio device comprises a Bluetooth, Wifi or Zigbee device."

The paper sited early from the CodeBlue project discloses all three network types.

Given the CodeBlue prior art, this patent application should not be allowed.