PFI:BIC: A Smart, "Always-on" Health Monitoring System

This proposal aims to develop a smart, "always-on" health-monitoring system capable of transforming healthcare from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive, proactive, evidence-based, and person-centered. These systems, based on the 'epidermal' electronic technology PIs Huang and Rogers have developed, will offer 'skin-like' properties, to enable intimate, complete non-invasive integration with the patient, in ways that are impossible with technologies that exist today. They will be mechanically invisible (i.e., not interfere with the patient's daily life), but interact with patients through self-detection, self-diagnosing and self-monitoring. They will allow clinicians and insurance companies to monitor the patients through wireless communications and data transmission to facilitate self-correcting and self-controlled functions, and the general public to assess, continuously, their health and well being. Continuous monitoring of medical devices that are in intimate contact with the body on a daily basis may help to prevent some serious medical problems, particularly in high risk groups of people. Intellectual Merit: This project combines the research excellence of the PIs and Senior Investigators on stretchable and flexible electronics, statistical signal processing, industrial design/human factor, and medicine to develop a smart, “always-on” health monitoring system. The core intellectual content ranges from nanomaterials, sensors, advanced signal processing, integrated system design, industrial design and human factors, and clinical studies of prosthetics. The PIs are uniquely well qualified to carry out this project, which involves: • Development of 'skin-like' temperature, hydration, ECG and EMG sensors, with wireless operation. These systems will exploit unique hardware, formed using extensions of ideas from PIs Huang and Rogers' prior work on deformable, curvilinear circuits, and their recent work on epidermal electronics and sensors. • Studies of interactions between this technology and people, particularly to account for human factors in the development of this health monitoring system. This aspect of work will be built on Co-PI McDonagh's prior on industrial design/human factors. • Development of effective and robust computational modeling and algorithms for statistical signal processing of the sensor data and pattern recognition to create a user-friendly interface for clinicians, patients and even the general public to interpret these data and their implications on health and well being. This aspect of the work will build on Senior Investigators Ghaffari and Murphy's prior work on statistical signal processing. • Application of the proposed sensor technologies and data processing and pattern recognition techniques to skin. The continuous capture, storage and transmission of sensor data will be critical to the design of smart, "always-on" health-monitoring system. This aspect of the work will exploit co-PI Paller's prior work on medicine. Broader Impact: A strong education program that ties closely to the research program will be established to train students to be next-generation leaders in engineering, computer and information science, and medicine. The PIs will actively involve undergraduate students in the proposed research, and encourage them to attend the annual Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium in Rogers' group, which attracts >50 undergraduates and reflects the strong appeal of the PIs' research to the younger generation. The proposed smart, "always-on" health-monitoring system is