SAPHE

(source: http://ubimon.doc.ic.ac.uk/saphe/index.php?m=338)

Improving the management of chronic disease is a key priority for national health policy. One major objective is to ensure that patients with chronic diseases should be treated in a community setting or supported at home whenever possible, resulting in lower demand for healthcare, releasing capacity, and allowing more effective use of resources. New approaches to chronic disease management (CDM) within a home or community setting also offer patients the prospect of more individually focused care and improved quality of life. Telecare has an important role to play within CDM. Using telecare could substantially improve patient survival and quality of life by assisting in the earlier identification of changes in a patient's condition, and enabling more appropriate and timely interventions. For example, a small weight gain can signal that a patient with congestive heart failure is retaining fluid. If caught early enough, the patient may be able to take medication or otherwise manage the problem at home, rather than having to be hospitalised. There is extensive evidence that hospitalisation rates in patients with heart failure can be substantially reduced by improved patient education, self-monitoring of weight, and rapid response to early signs of clinical deterioration. Thus far, the main focus of telecare has largely been (1) home safety and security monitoring and (2) vital signs monitoring within a 'response mode' approach, i.e. where an alert triggers a response from an appropriate service. SAPHE is to address the need for a new generation of pervasive healthcare and lifestyle monitoring systems to allow early detection of deteriorating health by identifying behaviour, physiological/metabolic changes over time. By combining intelligent ambient and wearable sensing, SAPHE will seek breakthroughs in a number of technological fronts and future pervasive healthcare provision:

Miniaturised autonomic sensing with self-management and configuration.

Integrated local analogue signal processing with ultra-low power sensor interface and wireless data path.

Processing-on-node technology with dynamic self organising maps (STSOM) for context aware sensing.

Automated trust-based decision support and "affective computing" for improved HCI.

Intelligent data mining and data fusion

The project will create an innovative 'turn-key' solution that enables health and care providers to support increased independence for vulnerable people outside health and social service institutions in a form that is lower-cost, more flexible, and acceptable to users.