Cognitive and functional assessment for telemedicine applications using Internet of Things

这是一个电气工程博士研究项目。该项目的目标将是在远程医疗环境中实现功能和认知评估，并利用物联网技术促进老年人和脆弱人群的远程医疗访问。及早发现认知退化，并随着时间的推移发现认知能力和功能之间的相关性是更好地告知诊断和个性化、持续和积极干预的关键因素，最终导致更成功和可持续的治疗。然而，专家通常每6个月或每年看一次患者，在两次评估之间留出很长的时间。拟议的项目将调查、传感、信号处理和机器学习技术，以便在远程访问期间进行物联网评估，例如使用非侵入性可穿戴传感器和/或增强现实接口来收集日常生活活动的数据以及生理数据。这种类型的远程医疗应用在我们正在经历的情况下尤其相关，在这种情况下，公民可能会自我隔离，法定服务能力受到限制，虚拟访问可以提供一种方法来控制医院、诊所和医务室的感染传播。

This is a PhD research project in Electrical Engineering.The goal of the project will be to enable functional and cognitive assessment in telemedicine settings, and generally facilitate remote medical visits of elderly and vulnerable people using Internet-of-Things technology.Spotting cognitive deterioration early and finding correlations between cognitive and functional ability over time are key enablers for better informing diagnosis and personalised, continuous, and pro-active interventions, ultimately leading to more successful and sustainable treatment. However, a specialist typically sees a patient every 6 months or annually , leaving large periods of time between assessments.The proposed project will investigate, sensing, signal processing and machine learning techniques for IoT-enabled assesment during tele-visits, for instance using non-intrusive wearable sensors and/or augmented reality interfaces to collect data on activities of daily living in addition to physiological data. This type of telemedicine application would be particularly relevant in situations like the one we are experiencing, when citizens can be self-isolating, statutory service capacity constrained, and when virtual visits can offer a way for containing spread of the infection at hospitals, clinics and medical offices.