Cambridge Design Partnership has developed what they say is the world’s first wearable device designed to measure and monitor the vital signs of multiple trauma patients for emergency response in disasters and battlefield situations.

Called First Response Monitor, the device is made to help medics monitor both heart rate and respiratory rate, the second of which is often neglected by automated monitoring systems. However, the benefits of accurately monitoring respiratory rate are clear, and when combined with other parameters, such as heart rate and body temperature, can indicate life-threatening conditions like sepsis.

First Response Monitor is lightweight, and it clips onto a patient’s nose. It collects and transmits data in real-time (via Bluetooth), enabling the medic to care for a greater number of casualties to get situational awareness across the group, while providing more effective casualty triage to deliver improved patient outcomes.

Although the device has been primarily designed with first response medics in mass casualty incidents in mind, it has applications in many other fields, including the civilian medicine where additional monitoring of conditions has demonstrable benefit in patient outcomes, wellness monitoring and within sports for training and performance monitoring. The technology can also be developed to provide a low-cost solution for low resource healthcare settings.

“With the First Response Monitor we’ve combined our expertise in wearable connected devices with our extensive medical experience to develop a technology for effectively measuring breathing and heart rate,” said James Baker, Partner at Cambridge Design Partnership. “The monitor can help save lives in a variety of environments and we’re really keen to speak to partners about developing the potential applications further.”