Clinical-Grade AFE from Analog Devices Measures Four Vital Signs for Remote Patient Monitoring Devices

September 21, 2021

News

MAX86178 features synchronized measurement of electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), heart rate (ECG or optical PPG), blood-oxygen saturation (SpO₂), and respiration rate (using BioZ).

Analog Devices, Inc.’s MAX86178 triple-system vital signs analog front end (AFE) simplifies the design of wearable remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices. This single-chip AFE integrates three measurement systems to obtain four common vital signs. The MAX86178 enables synchronized optical PPG and ECG timing for derived health metrics.

Medical device designers are eager to reduce annual healthcare-related expenditures by replacing office-based health monitoring systems with smaller, lower power, wireless devices worn discreetly and continuously in the home or office. With three clinical-grade subsystems integrated into one IC, the MAX86178 triple system AFE replaces discrete implementations by integrating an optical PPG sub-system to measure heart rate and SpO₂, a single lead ECG sub-system, as well as a biopotential and bioimpedance (BioZ) sub-system to measure respiration rate. It permits small vital signs devices by fitting those multiple functions into a 2.6mm x 2.8mm package.

In addition, next-generation wearable RPMs need to operate at low power to permit smaller batteries or extend battery life to allow more convenient charging requirements. To enable ultra-low power features, the MAX86178 provides each subsystem with configurable options to optimize battery life for specific use cases.

In addition, Analog Devices offers the MAX20343 buck-boost regulator and the MAX20360 power management IC as power solutions optimized for the MAX86178.