Design and development of a wearable medical smartwatch

The subject of my thesis concerns the hardware development of new functionalities inside a medical smartwatch, named PulsECG. PulsECG is an existing device that has been designed by Neuronica department of Politecnico di Torino, that measures ECG and blood oxygenation level. The goal was to use the knowledge acquired during the Electronic Engineering degree in order to develop a useful, practical and comfortable watch dedicated to the health of the user. In particular, the main objective was to add new functionalities in the watch without affecting size and wearability. PulsECG watch has kept the pre-existing functionalities: the measurement of the level of blood oxygenation and the ability to measure the main parameters of heart activity through an ECG graph on the smartphone application. The new smartwatch is also able to measure the body temperature of the user and has a motion sensor to adapt its functioning based on external factors. A focused research phase of the components available on the market combined with the study of their datasheets enabled me to take the first steps of this project work. The post-Covid global crisis has caused the lack of availability of raw materials and electronic components. The research became even more difficult considering that many chips are not available swiftly and have very long delivery times. A trade-off was necessary between technical requirements and availability of components. Secondly, I updated the schematics of the smartwatch making some adjustments to the PCBs through Cadence and Allegro softwares. Then, once assembled the boards I tested the new components using suitable firmwares loaded in the smartwatch in order to prove appropriate functioning. At the end of the whole activity, the smartwatch is suitable to measure ECG, SpO2, body temperature and movements. Thanks to a special software development on the smartphone application PulsECG, the user will have the opportunity to see the body temperature data (only ECG and SpO2 are currently visible). An additional work on the firmware can enable the smartwatch to detect if the user is wearing the device or it is in a resting or moving condition during the measurement. The information I have just provided are very useful to improve the battery life and also to understand if the measurements were made in right conditions.