I-Corps: Artificial Intelligence-based mobile application to mitigate health risks of firefighters

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发基于人工智能（AI）的移动应用程序，以减少消防员的死亡。消防员在接到警报后发生心脏骤停（SCE）的可能性是普通消防员的14倍，发生致命心脏骤停（SCE）的可能性是普通消防员的136倍。提出的技术旨在使用市售的个人无线可穿戴健康追踪器监测消防员的生理数据，评估心血管风险因素，并提醒消防员即将发生的风险。这项拟议技术的目标是降低消防员的死亡率和与心血管疾病相关的发病率。大约92%的院外心脏骤停导致死亡，这表明许多人没有认识到这些症状，也没有对早期预警迹象采取行动。早期识别增加SCE可能性的心血管健康风险（如高血压、心律失常、睡眠呼吸暂停），持续监测疾病进展，及时处理风险可能会增加SCE预防或存活的机会。这种健康追踪器成本低廉，可以持续跟踪生理数据（心率、睡眠行为）和身体活动（步数、行走距离、爬过的楼层），并可用于通过移动设备将这些数据无线上传到云端。长期效益可能包括心脏病发病率的降低，从而降低医疗成本，提高消防员的安全性。此外，拟议的技术可为一般人群使用，这可能对社会产生广泛的健康益处。这个I-Corps项目的基础是为消防部门开发一个移动软件应用程序，以减少消防员因心脏突发事件（SCE）而死亡。拟议的技术利用商业上可用的健康跟踪技术与人工智能（AI）模型相结合，这些模型是根据消防员的健康数据进行培训和开发的，并根据消防部门的相关临床研究进行定制。该软件采用原生反应跨平台（iOS/Android）构建，并与深度学习模型集成，可远程诊断心律失常、高血压、心房颤动和睡眠呼吸暂停，这些是消防数据中常见的心血管危险因素，导致突发心脏事件，是消防员发病率和值班死亡的主要原因（50-60%）。提出的物联网系统捕获可穿戴健康追踪器的生理数据，并将其提供给基于云的人工智能模型进行实时远程诊断。根据自定义风险阈值，当人工智能模型检测到健康风险时，可能会通知用户。此外，该软件应用程序的广泛长期使用还可以提供消防员生理数据的数据库，然后可以用于进一步改进技术，导致对消防生理和潜在病理反应的新理解，并刺激新的数据驱动的临床研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based mobile application to reduce firefighter deaths. Firefighters are fourteen times more likely to suffer a sudden cardiac event (SCE) in response to an alarm, and 136 times more likely to suffer a fatal SCE after firefighting than nonemergency duties. The proposed technology is designed to monitor the physiological data of firefighters using commercially available personal wireless wearable health trackers, evaluate cardiovascular risk factors, and alert the firefighter about impending risks. The goal for this proposed technology is to reduce firefighter mortalities and morbidities associated with cardiovascular disease. Approximately 92% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests result in death suggesting that many people do not recognize the symptoms, and don’t act on early warning signs. Early identification of cardiovascular health risks (e.g., hypertension, arrhythmia, sleep apnea) that increase the possibility of SCE, continuous monitoring of disease progression, and addressing risks in a timely manner may increase the chances of preventing or surviving a SCE. The health trackers are low-cost, and can continuously track physiological data (heart rate, sleep behavior) and physical activity (step count, travel distance, floors climbed), and may be used to upload this data wirelessly to the cloud via a mobile device. Long-term benefits may include a decrease in cardiac incidence that may lead to lower healthcare costs and improve the safety of firefighters. In addition, the proposed technology may be used by the general population, which may have a broad health benefit to society.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a mobile software application for the fire service to reduce firefighter deaths due to sudden cardiac events (SCE). The proposed technology utilizes commercially available health tracker technology integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) models that have been trained and developed using firefighters’ health data and customized using relevant clinical studies from the fire service. The proposed software is built with react-native cross-platform (iOS/Android) and is integrated with deep learning models to remotely diagnose arrhythmia, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and sleep apnea, which are prevalent cardiovascular risk factors in fire service data leading to sudden cardiac events – a leading cause (50-60%) of firefighter morbidity and on-duty deaths. The proposed Internet of Things system captures the physiological data from wearable health trackers and feeds it to cloud-based AI models for real-time remote diagnosis. Based on custom risk thresholds, the user may then be notified when a health risk is detected by the AI models. In addition, wide-spread prolonged usage of the proposed software application also may provide a database of firefighters’ physiological data that may then be used to further refine the technology, lead to new understandings of physiological, and potentially pathological, responses to firefighting, and stimulate new data-driven clinical research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.