CAREER: CPS: Internet of Wearable E-Textiles for Telemedicine

该项目旨在将智能电子纺织（e-textile）技术转化为满足远程医疗的需求。例如，全球大约有1000万人患有帕金森氏症。他们主要是老年患者，表现为震颤、僵硬、行动迟缓、行走和驾驶困难。尽管他们有残疾，但他们需要定期去诊所进行渐进式检查和干预。该项目专门针对改善深部脑刺激（DBS）植入患者的治疗方法，因为专业神经学家发现DBS治疗非常复杂且耗时。对医生来说，为每个病人量身定制电刺激是非常重要的。拟议中的研究在患者家中建立了一个智能基础设施，这样患者无需去诊所，就可以独立地进行包括手指敲击、手翻转、脚趾敲击和跺脚等运动练习在内的医疗筛查。此外，该系统建立在现代物联网技术的基础上，使神经科医生能够及时执行远程医疗干预。该项目将形成一个家庭可穿戴物联网中心（简称“IoT-Hub”），由电子手套、电子袜子等智能电子纺织品以及用于数据分析、存储和与医院云服务器通信的配套计算设备组成。物联网中心将具有独特的功能，将医疗护理从医院转变为家庭：1)通过编织在电子手套和电子袜子中的传感器，以医疗级精度测量运动症状；2)由平板电脑上运行的智能闭环算法驱动的患者友好界面；3)临床数据分析，为神经科医生做出数据驱动的明智决策。拟议中的物联网中心缩小了物联网、医疗保健、智能纺织品和以患者为中心的设计领域之间的知识差距，所有这些领域都需要跨学科的科学发现和创新。这个项目将对越来越多患有帕金森病或其他神经系统疾病的老年患者产生潜在的深远影响。可穿戴嵌入式系统的智能算法、电子纺织品设计和电路以及去识别的远程医疗数据将广泛传播到科学界。PI在URI开发了独特的物联网课程，包括一系列以设计为中心的活动；关于创业思维的物联网黑客马拉松；为大学生开设可穿戴物联网课程，学习创新的个性化健康和保健解决方案；以及可穿戴工程项目，让高中生参与动手工程活动。

This CAREER project aims to translate the smart electronic textile (e-textile) technologies to fill the need for telemedicine. For example, there are around 10 million individuals across the globe who live with Parkinson's disease. They are majorly elderly patients who experience tremors, rigidity, slowness of movement, and difficulties in walking and driving. Despite their disabling condition, they need to make periodic visits to clinics for progressive checks and interventions. The project specifically targets improving treatments for patients with deep brain stimulation (DBS) implants because specialized neurologists find DBS treatments very complex and time consuming. It is very important for the doctors to personalize the electrical stimulations for each and every patient. The proposed research establishes an intelligent infrastructure in patients' homes so that patients, without visiting clinics, could independently perform a medical screening consisting of movement exercises such as finger tapping, hand flipping, toe tapping, and foot stomping. Moreover, the system builds upon modern internet-of-things technologies to keep neurologists in the loop to execute telemedicine interventions. The project will result into an in-home, wearable internet-of-things hub (referred to as "IoT-Hub") consisting of smart e-textiles such as e-gloves, e-socks, and companion computing devices for data analytics, storage, and communications to the cloud servers of hospitals. IoT Hub will have unique features to translate the medical care from hospitals to homes: 1) the measurements of movement symptoms with a medical-grade precision through sensors woven into e-gloves and e-socks, 2) the patient-friendly interface driven by intelligent close-loop algorithms running on tablet computers, and 3) clinical data analytics for neurologists to make data-driven informed decision on DBS treatments. The proposed IoT-Hub closes the knowledge gap between the areas of IoT, healthcare, smart textiles, and patient-centered design - all of which require interdisciplinary scientific discoveries and innovations.This project will have a potentially profound impact on the growing number of elderly patients living with Parkinson's disease or other neurological conditions. Intelligent algorithms for wearable embedded systems, e-textile designs and circuits, and de-identified telemedicine data will be broadly disseminated to the scientific community. The PI has developed a unique IoT curriculum at URI that involves a series of design-centered activities; an IoT hack-a-thon for entrepreneurial thinking; and awearable IoT course for university students to learn innovating personalized health and wellness solutions; and wearable engineering program to engage high school students in hands-on engineering activities.