SHB: Small: Collaborative Research: Electronic Textiles for Ambulatory Health Monitoring

多项研究表明，动态健康监测为患者提供了显著的益处。改善患者结果的最大希望在于对慢性病患者进行长期、动态的监测，以帮助医生和患者在达到危机阶段之前识别健康问题。该项目致力于设计具有日常服装外观和手感的门诊健康监测服装，以及一种监测方法，该方法通过自动注释活动和运动的生理数据，仅在特定条件下收集数据，并对日常工作影响最小，从而消除了患者遵从性的一些障碍。智能的优点在于算法、设计方法和评估方法，使穿着和忘记服装能够用于动态健康监测。这个项目开发的方法使用了一种计算量较大的姿势估计算法，该算法自动采用计算效率更高的算法来进行活动分类。该项目通过开发将光纤传感器融入服装的设计和评估方法，解决了提供外观和手感都像日常服装的服装的挑战。与离散传感器相比，这些传感器具有显著的优势，因为它们可以编织或缝合到面料中，覆盖更大的服装区域，并自然悬垂。这项研究的更广泛影响在于有可能消除阻碍有效利用动态健康监测来提高患者及其家人的生活质量的障碍。

Ambulatory health monitoring has been demonstrated to provide significant benefits to patients in a number of studies. The biggest promise for improved results for patients lies in the long-term, ambulatory monitoring of patients with chronic illnesses to help doctors and patients identify health issues before they reach a crisis stage. This project pursues the design of garments for ambulatory health monitoring that have the look and feel of every day clothing, together with an approach to monitoring that removes some of the barriers to patient compliance by automatically annotating physiological data with activities and motions, collecting data only during specific conditions, and having minimal impact on daily routine. The intellectual merits lie in the algorithms, design methodologies, and evaluation methodologies that enable wear-and-forget garments for ambulatory health monitoring. The approach developed by this project uses a computationally intensive pose estimation algorithm that automatically adapts a more computationally efficient algorithm for activity classification. This project addresses the challenges of providing garments that look and feel like everyday clothing by developing design and evaluation methodologies for incorporating fiber-based sensors into garments. These have significant advantages over discrete sensors by being woven or sewn into the fabric, covering much larger areas of a garment, and draping naturally. The broader impacts of the research lie in the potential to remove barriers that prevent the effective use of ambulatory health monitoring to improve the quality of life for patients and their families.