FLEXIGUARD

The FlexiGuard system was developed at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, in cooperation with the 1st Medical Faculty, Charles University in Prague. The functionality of the system was designed in close cooperation with experts in medicine and safety engineering. It is based on the needs of the end users, mostly rescuers, firefighters and soldiers.

The aim of the system is to provide enhanced overall safety to health during rescue and other missions. Various physiological and environmental parameters are measured on each team member (e.g. heart rate, body motion, body temperature, humidity, the presence of explosive or toxic gases, presence of radiation, GPS position, etc.). The data is wirelessly transmitted to the commander's visualization unit. After appropriate processing, information on the health status of each person is displayed on a handheld device (e.g. a tablet, a smartphone or a PC), for example, an estimate of his or her energy expenditure, anaerobic threshold, body position, detection of overheating, presence of hazardous substances in the environment, etc. This information is presented in userfriendly form (redorangegreen "traffic semaphores", with individually adjustable thresholds), and can be used immediately, for example to support decisionmaking or optimal individual profiling of the training process. In addition, each personal device keeps a complete record of the monitored signals in its internal memory for detailed offline analysis.