II-NEW: miSense: Platform for Medical Sensing Applications

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(Public Law 111-5)资助的。考虑到美国的人口趋势(人口老龄化、慢性病日益流行)、护理人员短缺和医院能力下降，美国医疗体系每天面临巨大的挑战也就不足为奇了。多项研究表明，在病人护理过程中使用低效工具是医院过度拥挤和效率低下的根本原因之一。因此，自动化患者监测过程的工具将极大地提高卫生保健的质量和效率。虽然这些需求被广泛接受，但技术开发人员面临着大量问题。首先，需要一个多阶段的基础设施，包括传感设备、有线和无线网络以及后端服务器，以产生与医学相关的结果。其次，可以理解的是，医疗保健提供者几乎没有时间和耐心来处理未经测试的技术和工程原型。最后，医疗设施和以人类为研究对象的研究带来了独特的技术、管理和伦理挑战，很少有技术人员遇到这些挑战。该项目将通过开发用于医疗传感应用的端到端平台miSense来解决这些挑战。MiSense包括用于设计、开发和部署医疗保健领域引人注目的传感应用程序的所有硬件和软件组件，包括用于连接医疗传感器的开放平台设备(MiTag)、用于传输数据的无线网状网络(Minet)以及用于存储、分析和显示患者数据的服务器(miStore、miView)。此外，该项目将开发三个医疗传感应用程序(Milabs)，并将它们部署在JHU急诊科、JHU儿童中心和马里兰大学创伤中心。MiSense将彻底改变医疗传感应用和医疗保健，正如TinyOS项目彻底改变了传感器网络及其在科学领域的应用一样。最后，这个项目将通过参与项目和联合课程开发，为计算机科学家、医生、护理专业人员、本科生和高中生之间提供跨学科学习的机会。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Given the U.S. demographic trends (aging population, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases), nursing staff shortages, and decreasing hospital capacities, it is no surprise that the U.S. healthcare system faces immense challenges on a daily basis. Multiple studies have shown that the use of inefficient tools in the patient care process is one of the root causes behind overcrowded and inefficient hospitals. Thereby, tools that automate the patient monitoring process will greatly improve the quality and effectiveness of health care. While these needs are widely accepted, a multitude of problems confront technology developers. First, a multi-stage infrastructure, including sensing devices, wired and wireless networks, and back-end servers, is necessary to generate medically relevant results. Second, healthcare providers have understandably little time and patience to work with untested technologies and engineering prototypes. Finally, healthcare facilities and research with human subjects present unique technical, administrative, and ethical challenges that few technologists have encountered.This project will address these challenges through the development of miSense, an end-to-end platform for medical sensing applications. miSense includes all hardware and software components to design, develop, and deploy compelling sensing applications in the healthcare field, including open-platform devices (miTags) for connecting medical sensors, a wireless mesh network (miNet) for delivering data, and servers (miStore, miView) to store, analyze, and display patient data. Furthermore, the project will develop three medical sensing applications (miLabs) and deploy them in the JHU Emergency Department, the JHU Children's Center and the University of Maryland Trauma Center. miSense will revolutionize medical sensing applications and healthcare, as the TinyOS project revolutionized sensor networks and their applications to the sciences. Finally, this project will offer opportunities for transdisciplinary learning between computer scientists, physicians, nursing professionals, undergraduates, and high school students through involvement in the project and joint course development.