Patent ID: 7689271

Claim:
A heart rate and respiration rate monitoring method comprising: providing at least one piezoelectric pad, providing one or more surfaces on the at least one piezoelectric pad for contacting a patient's feet or hand extremities with the piezoelectric pad, providing one or more discretized sensor arrays on the one or more surfaces of the piezoelectric pad, contacting the patient's feet or hand extremities to the one or more discretized sensor arrays by leaning on or standing on and thereby contacting the one or more discretized sensor arrays, collecting discretized acoustic, electromechanical or other physiological signals with the discretized sensing array, converting the discretized acoustic, electromechanical or other physiological signals into discretized voltage signals, transmitting the discretized voltage signals from the discretized sensing array to a receiving and computing device, calculating a value for the heart rate and respiration rate of a patient via analyzing time series data and producing energy spectra for each location that the patient's feet or hand extremities contact the discretized sensor array.