ITRI shows 60GHz mmWave, thermal imaging medical system

Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is showing its smart medical technology in the US for the first time this week.

The smart medical technologies from ITRI include the High-Privacy AI Digital Caregiver, the Intelligent Medical Assistant Solution (iMAS), Janus cybersecuroty and MedBobi telemedicine system.

The High-Privacy AI Digital Caregiver, co-developed by ITRI and Streamteck, also in Taiwan, is an advanced remote monitoring system that uses thermal imaging and millimeter wave radar technologies to detect patients’ vital signs and activities with hospital-level accuracy while maintaining privacy.

The system tracks bed exits, falls and prolonged inactivity, and promptly alerts caregivers via a mobile app when abnormalities are detected. With its compact design, it is perfect for use in clinics, wards, nursing homes and homes.

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The 60GHz mmWave radar and thermal imaging sensors accurately detect body temperature, heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen saturation, matching the accuracy of hospital equipment.

The privacy thermal imaging eliminates the need for cameras, ensuring patient privacy. With a fine resolution of 3.75cm, compared to the  60cm of existing systems, it precisely identifies images and boasts an action detection error rate of <1% for activities like prolonged lying, bed exits and falling.

AI-based noise filtering and IoT capabilities work together to minimize interference based on the distance from the heat source, ambient temperature and humidity, ensuring accurate body temperature detection and continuous motion analysis.

Real-time alerts are sent via a mobile app to immediately notify caregivers of any abnormal incidents such as fever, shortness of breath or falls. This feature enables early detection of emergencies, reducing staff response time from one hour to just one minute. It significantly improves remote monitoring, emergency response rates and outcomes.

ITRI tested 50 units at a Taipei City Hospital long-term care facility, where they successfully met National Early Warning Score (NEWS) standards. It achieves accuracy of <±2 bpm for respiratory rate, <5% for heart rate, <±0.3 degrees Celsius for body temperature, <±2% for blood oxygen, and maintains a 90% accuracy rate for blood pressure trends. It also has an action detection error of <1% for activities such as prolonged standing, sitting, lying down, bed exits and falling.

Alongside AI system shown at CES 2025 this week, the portable Intelligent Medical Assistant Solution (iMAS) integrates multiple lightweight and portable medical devices to offer a comprehensive telemedicine solution for patients with limited access to healthcare. Its intelligent medical imaging technology aids in diagnostic interpretation, enabling physicians to provide remote diagnoses.

Doctors can monitor patient conditions in real time, helping to prevent treatment delays. During remote visits, physicians can easily carry the portable iMAS to deliver swift diagnosis and care. iMAS serves as a “homespital” solution that seamlessly combines home care and hospital services. This innovative solution has been licensed to 36 vendors including collaboration with Thailand’s largest telecom company.

Janus is AI-powered cybersecurity for medical device manufacturing. By integrating seamlessly into the process, it helps manufacturers meet rigorous global compliance standards like FDA, HIPAA, and NIST in the US. This proactively protects devices from cyber threats, monitors M-IoT communications in real time, and detects suspicious activities. It simplifies network logs, updates firewalls dynamically, and streamlines compliance processes. This not only enhances product security but also boosts market competitiveness. As healthcare demands robust data protection, Janus offers a reliable and efficient solution, setting a new standard for smart cybersecurity in medical devices.

MedBobi is a smart medical assistant system that uses multimodal generative AI and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology to rapidly create medical reports from voice input and other data. It can understand up to 96 languages such as English, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Japanese, Spanish, French and Thai and can convert speech into text, reducing medical staff’s administrative work time by 75%. The system integrates voice input, pathological images and patient records to provide AI-powered personalized medical recommendations. Additionally, MedBobi features a professional dementia database, allowing users to better understand the disease through text-based Q&A and obtain personalized care plans.