Connecting cardiological and neurological health: Key neurotech patent by Medtronic

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cardiac signals
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 8,209,009

Today we are shar­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing Medtron­ic patent com­bin­ing car­diac mon­i­tor­ing with brain stim­u­la­tion. (As men­tioned, we are fea­tur­ing foun­da­tion­al Per­va­sive Neu­rotech patents, from old­er to new­er by issue date)

U.S. Patent No. 8,209,009: Sys­tem and method for seg­ment­ing a car­diac sig­nal based on brain stimulation

  • Assignee(s): Medtron­ic, Inc.
  • Inventor(s): Jonathon E. Gif­takis, Nina M. Graves, Mark Turn­er Rise
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: Neuro-monitoring
  • Issue Date: June 26, 2012

SharpBrains’ Take:

This patent con­sid­ers the inter-rela­tion­ship and co-occur­rence of activ­i­ty between brain and heart. The “Back­ground of the Inven­tion” sec­tion pro­vides exam­ples of the impor­tance of con­sid­er­ing activ­i­ty between these two major organs, for instance in deal­ing with sud­den unex­pect­ed death in epilep­sy (SUDEP) often asso­ci­at­ed with heart and pul­monary dys­func­tion or indi­ca­tors. A com­pelling 68 claims (with 5 weav­ing inde­pen­dent claims) cov­er var­i­ous aspects and fea­tures of the dis­closed embod­i­ments, includ­ing both mon­i­tor­ing and stim­u­la­tion ele­ments. The co-con­sid­er­a­tion of car­di­o­log­i­cal and neu­ro­log­i­cal health, exten­sive spec­i­fi­ca­tion (includ­ing 59 illus­tra­tion sheets and 32 pages of writ­ten mate­r­i­al) and com­pelling claim set are among the fac­tors con­tribut­ing to make the ‘009 patent a key non-inva­sive neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

A med­ical device sys­tem that includes a brain stim­u­lat­ing ele­ment, car­diac mon­i­tor­ing ele­ment and a proces­sor. The proces­sor is con­fig­ured to receive a brain stim­u­la­tion sig­nal from the brain stim­u­lat­ing ele­ment and a car­diac sig­nal from the car­diac mon­i­tor­ing ele­ment. The proces­sor is fur­ther con­fig­ured to deter­mine at least one ref­er­ence point for a stim­u­la­tion event time peri­od by eval­u­a­tion of the brain stim­u­la­tion sig­nal. The proces­sor fur­ther iden­ti­fies a first por­tion of the car­diac sig­nal based on the at least one ref­er­ence point of the stim­u­la­tion event time period.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 44. A method of stim­u­lat­ing brain and mon­i­tor­ing car­diac activ­i­ty comprising:

  1. stim­u­lat­ing the brain dur­ing a stim­u­la­tion event time period;
  2. mon­i­tor­ing the heart and out­putting a car­diac sig­nal indica­tive of activ­i­ty in the heart;
  3. deter­min­ing, with elec­tron­ic cir­cuit­ry, at least one ref­er­ence point for the brain stim­u­la­tion event time peri­od by eval­u­a­tion of a stim­u­la­tion state indi­cat­ing stim­u­la­tion of the brain by the brain stim­u­lat­ing ele­ment; and
  4. iden­ti­fy­ing, with the elec­tron­ic cir­cuit­ry, a first por­tion of a record­ing of the car­diac sig­nal based on the at least one ref­er­ence point of the brain stim­u­la­tion event time period.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.