Technology: EEG Monitoring Using A Smartphone App
Remember when EEG monitoring in patients with severe TBI looked like a maze of multicolored spaghetti plugged into a small refrigerator? Well, technology is advancing rapidly and the hardware is shrinking fast.
This EEG monitor uses an EEG headset, which has fewer leads than the old standard. The headset connects to a Nokia smartphone using a wireless connection. And while it can’t compete with a regular EEG on fine detail like localizing seizure foci, it should easily be able to measure something as crude as burst suppression in trauma patients in pentobarb coma.
Expect more advances like this. Computing and monitoring is leaving the realm of the dedicated (and physically large) device, and moving toward handheld monitoring using off-the-shelf hardware like smartphones.
