BITalino — interview with Hugo Silva

Hugo Silva has a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Lisbon and is a researcher at the Telecommunications Institute since 2004 and a Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal since 2016. He also co-founded PLUX — Wireless Biosignals, where he currently is a member of the board of directors and innovation consultant. His main interests include physiological computation, systems engineering, signal processing, and pattern recognition.

In a Bluesession held by jeKnowledge, we had an introductory workshop to BITalino presented by Hugo Silva, Director of Innovation of BITalino and part of the team that developed BITalino, who shared with jeKnowledge the story behind this (r)evolutionary kit.

What led you to create the BITalino and what was the inspiration?

BITalino was developed to satisfy a set of needs that we had. At the time I was doing the PhD, there were other colleagues of mine in the same process, and we had some needs in installing several biosignal units to collect data from dozens of people at the same time. The problem we face is that the commercially available systems are very expensive, amounting to several tens of thousands of euros.

In the open source and do-it-yourself segment, there is Arduino and Raspberry Pi which, while low-cost, are not designed for biomedical applications. In this way, we did a lot of work and tried to use platforms like Arduino to make biosignals acquisition with performance compared to the more expensive commercial systems.

How does BITalino work in practice? How are the signals received?

The way the BITalino works is based on the acquisition of analog signals, digitizing them through a microcontroller and sending wirelessly to the computer or to a mobile phone. The circuit is self-powered by a rechargeable battery. All this circuit is mounted on the board and allows us to make the biosignal acquisition in a more simplified format.

How did you manage to create a low-cost kit compared to hospital equipment?

What we did was deconstruct hospital equipment to the essential minimum. Usually, hospital systems have a box, instruction manual, technical support, warranty and many other things that involve a series of costs of structure that in our case, as we were doing a tool without this strand, we managed to eliminate.

Besides that, at the component level, we choose components that in some aspects don’t have such high performance: we chose simpler software, for example. By using only the minimum necessary, we were able to make the system available at a lower price.

It is important to mention that typically companies aim to capitalize on the developments they make and in our case, we have developed BITalino as an academic tool. It was a system for our problem at the time.

Being a low-cost device, has it had an impact on medicine in developing countries?

One of the things we have discussed and that we are sorry for not having reached that level is to have BITalino as a tool for quick use in a disaster area and in countries in need. There are many similar initiatives in the field of 3D printing, such as cheaper prosthetics. We have been able to reduce the price and it can be distributed by people in remote regions to self-evaluate themselves. Obviously, it is not something aligned with the capitalist goals of most companies but has a very own mission and I think we will be able to get there. We have hope for this to happen.

BITalino has users all over the world and has customers like Intel, Samsung, MIT, and Boeing. How do these multinationals use BITalino?

These multinationals use BITalino in two ways: to arrive at a proof of concept faster and/or to reduce the costs of validation.

The companies with whom we have worked, often think of a concept that goes into the use of biosignals (for example, a smart clock that measures heart rate) and instead of developing the entire process from scratch and putting the project on a path of engineering that would consume a lot of time and work, they can pick up on BITalino to have a base that already allows them to acquire signals and send them wirelessly to somewhere. This puts them in the middle of the development cycle. They can more quickly validate these ideas and, in addition, reduce costs.

We also work with other companies that are very competent in the area of software but in the area of hardware don’t have as many skills. For example, a company that dominates the cardiac diagnostic and artificial intelligence part but doesn’t have so much knowledge in the hardware development part uses BITalino as the hardware component that supports their systems in the acquisition part of the signals. It has been around these profiles that companies have adopted the BITalino.

In addition to the smartwatches you mentioned, can you give other examples of practical applications of BITalino? Like games, etc.

It has been very diversified and I think one of the advantages of BITalino is this. In the context of Biomedical Engineering, BITalino opens the range of opportunities and shows people that biosignals have space beyond the environments of a clinic and a hospital. In this area, we have seen applications and projects ranging from the arts to the more classic clinical applications.

These are some of the most emblematic examples:

• A mining company, Bear Creek Mining, used BITalino in conjunction with the Arduino and made a scarf that people can use to measure physiological and environmental parameters. It’s a project called NazcAlpaca and it was something that surprised us by the concept and for being a very finished project.
• We have an interactive room in an exhibition where the visitor enters the room and the room (The Glitch Chamber) detects his affectionate state. Based on this reaction and feelings received by the person, the room changes its behavior as the sound and luminous interaction.
• We have other cases of augmentative communication. A research center in the UK that works with people with special needs has developed an electromyographic controlled system that receives muscle signals from any part of the body. The user becomes able to control the computer, which increases their ability to interact.
• Another example is the man-machine interaction that makes the hospital a more pleasant environment for the person according to their signs. If a person is in stress or a more amplified emotional state, the context of the hospital unit is changed to calm it down.

There are many different uses and we have more creative projects linked to the more artistic part.

• For example, a group of colleagues who chose to use BITalino to make a musical instrument. They made an aerial battery using pattern recognition techniques to detect, from the motion, where a point in space is approximate. They also developed a drumstick that allowed to play the drums with gestures only, without the battery being there.
• On Valentine’s Day, an engineer who wanted to give a different gift to his girlfriend made a heart-tracing of his heart using BITalino, printed on a postcard and used it as a gift.

There are many different applications and many people doing out of the box projects and I think that is one of the great differences of BITalino: open this area to the world and sensitize more people to the things they can do.

Can anyone have access to BITalino?

Yes, anyone can have access. The sensors are compatible with the Arduino. We were careful not to close BITalino on its own and ensure that people with different skill levels were able to use the Arduino sensor and make their applications without having to rely on kits that are sometimes more expensive.

The fact of democratizing these technologies through the low cost and the simplicity of use allows people to start doing more things sooner and gives opportunities to people who have creativity but who previously didn’t have the tools available.

Is BITalino produced and developed in Portugal?

Yes. It is important to point out that from a perspective of Biomedical Engineering and engineering, in general, this area is growing enormously at this moment and everything is happening in Portugal. We usually think that it only happens out there but in this case, it is a revolution that is also happening in Portugal. It’s a particular thing because we can easily get involved in student work in Coimbra or in other parts of the country, helping them to develop these ideas and promote them.

There are cases of students that for the contributions they had in the BITalino community were eventually hired by foreign companies because they showed a lot of competence in solving solutions for this area. It is indeed something different that is happening here and that can generate many opportunities for people who have an interest in working in this area in their different subjects.

Can BITalino be used seriously in medicine?

It is not a certified medical device for one reason: in certification, there is an aspect that is important that is the designated use. An ECG machine is designed to diagnose heart disease and in the case of BITalino, we have a toolbox that has no specific purpose. What we are doing is certifying the device as a conventional electronic device, such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi. BITalino can grow to be a medical device when it has a designated use. We already have some devices that are “powered by BITalino”, in which people make a closed solution, certify that solution and have BITalino in that framework. So it’s something you can do.

Although we have several people using it in this context, what we guarantee is that technically the system is validated. We have already done several comparative studies of BITalino against reference systems to ensure that someone using our platform has the assurance that it works as well or better than certain medical devices.