Trends

At present, biomedical information and, more specifically, Biomedical signals (bio-signals), are classified as a dynamic branch of natural science. Foremost, application of bio-signal processing that could be thought by any individual is the medical and disabled assistance field. It is absolutely true but, nowadays, applications of bio-signals have been expanded to cover a wide range of domains including Sport and Rehabilitation exercise, Marketing, Management and leadership, Human Resource, Brain Computer Interface, Education, Human Computer Interaction, Autonomous Driving, Game, AR/VR technologies and many more. Considering the broad contribution of bio-signals in multiple areas of study, we could eventually outline the emerging role of bio-signal datasets in the future of above-mentioned technologies and research.

In-fact, In the medical and disabled assistance field, physicians and human service experts utilize the outcome of processed biosignals to perform diagnosis of medical diseases (like high blood pressure and disabled people’s circumstances) and issues. Biosignal types mostly drop into two categories: action potential (like Electromyogram, Electroneurogram, Electrocardiogram, Electroencephalogram and event-related potential Electroencephalogram, Phonocardiogram.

The number of studies in the field of bio-signal data analysis is sharply growing. In the diagrams below, we examined just two types of fields among many that are related to bio-signal processing [30]. As mentioned earlier, two types of systematic review research presented below are concentrated on improved detection of humans’ Hypertension and Human Machine Interface for assistance and rehabilitation. According to the statistics extracted from the literature and illustrated below, we could confirm that the level of importance of bio-signal datasets is growing exponentially. It could be summarized that by increasing attempts on research and development on various types of bio-signals which have been performed during the past decade, there will be a higher percentage of demand from research centers and industries for bio-signal datasets which results in generation of Big Data of bio-signals in the close future [30].

Figure 1: Histogram illustrating trends in the number of biosignal-related studies from 2000 to 2020 Pie chart demonstrating the percentage distribution of the selected studies to the field of application

Ambitiously, we at Zarela recognized the trends of bio-signal usage, which is explained above. We developed a platform based upon the blockchain technology to enable people from any occupation to gain advantage either in requesting bio-signals or providing bio-signals. Blockchain has been selected as the underlying technology of Zarela’s platform to let requesters and providers of the bio-signals exchange the dataset in a secure and trusted manner. Moreover, requesters and providers of the bio-signals could obtain beneficial features spiritually and financially. From one hand and regarding the fact that the cost of accurate bio-signals datasets might be high for the requesters, it will be much more cost efficient for them to acquire the clean and accurate datasets through the Zarela’s ecosystem. On the other hand, providers of bio-signals also could receive a spiritual benefit of contribution involvement in the research as well as financial benefit by exchanging bio-signals with BioBit token.

Figure 2: Number of publications per year and associated biosignal modalities combined with PPG from 2010 to 2019 [30]