Современные тенденции в сфере сохранения здоровья общества демонстрируют смещение акцентов с лечения на предупреждение заболев
Current trends in the area of maintaining public health demonstrate a shift of accents from treatment to prevention of diseases. In all the industrially developed countries, a healthy lifestyle is being intensely advocated and popularized, accounting for 50% of the people's health, according to the World Health Organization. Regular sports activities and exercise are viewed as one of the most essential components of a healthy lifestyle, however, an analysis of the impact of exercise on individual human health shows that it often has no invigorating effect and sometimes even causes a worsening of an individuals' health. Three-quarters of those involved in swimming and hiking on weekends regularly catch colds. This is accounted for by the fact that any sports activities and exercise are a powerful factor influencing a person's health. As a rule, the absence of medical monitoring or quality self-control essentially reduces the invigorating effect of exercise.
One of the best ways to measure the influence of exercise on a human body is to analyze its physiological parameters (pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, etc.). Currently the fitness management devices are represented on the market only by pulse monitors produced by Polar, Reebok, CardioSport, FreeStyle and Sensor Dynamics. However, monitoring health condition by pulse measurement is acceptable for no more than 50% of the population. This is related to the fact that this method of control does not provide a complete account of individual and age-determined features of the human body. In addition, the method does not allow effecting planning of exercise and does not reveal signs of overstrain. Therefore, the use of pulse monitors does not preclude the necessity of supplementary observation of the athlete's condition by medical doctors and coaches.
Fitness management based on diagnosing the functional states of the body does not have these disadvantages. Diagnostics and registration of functional states of a human body are considered to be an optimal method of selecting any kind of exposure, including exposure to exercise (Sports Medicine, Edited by V.L. Karpman, 1987). Monitoring the condition of an organism enables consideration of individual features of people, planning their workload, discovering signs of overstrain and, consequently, exercising on a higher quality level.
Evaluation of the functional body state in clinical and sports medicine is carried out with the help of methodologies based on studying the functional state of separate body systems: the organs of blood circulation, respiratory apparatus, organs of the nervous system and the nervous/muscular system. Such methodologies include the PWC-170 test, the Harvard step test, the evaluation of the maximum quantity of oxygen consumed. Despite their reliability their use in sports practice is fairly limited. The main reason is that these methodologies are laborious, hard on the athlete undergoing testing and require medical control.
Today the market begins to offer complexes for the diagnostics of the body state based on the determination of the biologically active points (BAP). The shortcoming of these systems is that their use requires an extensive medical practice, as the interpretation of results is difficult and depends on many factors. Besides, the development of an automated methodology of BAP diagnostics is considered impossible.
During the last 10-15 years the evaluation of the functional body state based on the analysis of the the heart rate variability (HRV) became wide-spread. This method is successfully used in professional and clinical medicine. It is recognized as the most convenient and promising one, as it is non-invasive, fast and open for automation.
The first studies in this field were conducted in the Research Institute of Medical and Biological problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the 1960-s. The aim of the research was to increase the efficiency of preparation and training of cosmonauts and pilots. According to the available sources, the work of this kind was conducted only in Russia. This is why Russian scientists are pioneers in the field.
According to the data of the European Society of Cardiologists, research in the field of HRV is one of the five priority areas in cardiology. The number of publications on this problem in international media increases by 50-100% each year (http://www.kfinder.com). According to the participants of the international virtual congress on HRV, this is explained by the fact that HRV-based technologies will create the preconditions for the individual approach to the patient and for the optimal management of the patient's health (http://www.hrvcongress.org).
The novelty of ORTO Expert is that it is an automated diagnostic system for the functional body state based on HRV analysis, so it doesn't require the user to have medical qualifications. The expert kernel program automatically interprets the results and presents them in a simple and graphic form which is understandable both to the medical worker and an ordinary user. ORTO Expert is fully integrated into the conception of the individual approach and health management.
The development of the ORTO Expert kernel program began in 1993. In order to build the diagnostic expert system, the results of medical check-ups of over 50 thousand people aged between 1 day and 75 years with the use of HRV analysis have been analyzed. As a result, the expert kernel program has been developed taking into account age-related and individual topological features of the body during the diagnostics of the functional body state. It considerably increased the possibilities of individual approaches to training when using ORTO Expert. The expert kernel program has considerably improved the quality of diagnostics compared to analogous methods.
Modern tendencies in technology development suggest an increase in its intellectual level and simplification of the requirements for the user's qualifications. ORTO has been developed in accordance with these requirements.
One of the main advantages of ORTO Expert is its simplicity of use and easy applicability of the diagnostic results in practice. It is achieved due to the optimization of the system's interface, the use of wireless technologies, the presence of the expert kernel program which simplifies the presentation of diagnostic results, and carefully thought-out presentation of the diagnostic results. The result is that the system can be used with equal effect both by doctors and by people without medical background. Similar systems of other developers are difficult to operate and require specialized medical knowledge both for their operation and interpretation of diagnostic results.
Recently, there has been a growing interest in various human physiological parameters expressed by the companies previously distant from medical and biological technologies. It is caused by the necessity to increase the efficiency of interaction between man and technology. Such companies pay special attention to the pulse and some other HRV parameters.
Microsoft in the SmartMoveX project studies the possibility of using the pulse as an indicator of the current activity of the user (rest, practicing sport, etc.) in order to optimize the performance of portable computers (http://research.microsoft.com/displayarticle.aspx?id=165).
The Dutch company Philips created a marketing alliance with the US Nike company (“Co”№ 13 (209) of 8 April, 2002) in order to promote its electronic devices among the buyers of sports clothes. Nike has been long engaged in the development of “smart” clothing.
At the CeBIT exhibition which took place in Germany in March 2002, the Japanese company Mitsubishi Electric Telecom showed the concept-phone “Mountain Communicator”. It is fastened to the belt and has the usual functions of a mobile phone. Besides, the device is constantly sending a special signal which helps rescuers to locate the person swept by an avalanche. Special sensors transmit biometric information to the life-saving station which, in the case of emergency, is used by rescuers to determine the condition of the victim.
Sony and Toyota made an announcement about the joint development of the system which would keep track of the driver's weariness based on the analysis of his HRV parameters (RedHerring, July, 2002). As the user's weariness and motor activity influence the functional body state, it is possible to make similar devices on the basis of the ORTO expert kernel program.
The intermediary research results during the development of ORTO Expert were used in 6 Ph.D. dissertations on human physiology and pediatrics. The technology of diagnostics used in ORTO Expert was positively evaluated by the Research Institute of Medical and Biological Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was experimentally proved that the monitoring of sports training sessions with the help of the ORTO system is considerably better that the control based on pulse monitoring (A.R. Galeev, E.M. Kazin., L.N. Igisheva. “The Use of Heart Rate Variability Analysis in Motor Activity Optimization”, Valeology №2, 2001). During the application of the ORTO complexes a lot of scientific and practical experience was accumulated in 42 Russian centers of monitoring children's health, 3 clinics, 12 sports organizations and 6 universities. The conducted research demonstrated the efficiency of the use of the HRV analysis for the diagnostics and correction of various body states.
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