II-NEW: mHealth - Computing Infrastructure for Mobile Health and Wellness Monitoring

医疗保健系统正面临一场迫在眉睫的危机，这场危机是由当前社会、经济和人口趋势的汇合引发的。根据美国人口普查局的数据，我们在医疗保健方面的总支出在2009年达到2.5万亿美元，预计到2020年将达到全国国内生产总值的20%。这些统计数据表明，需要寻求更具可扩展性和更实惠的医疗解决方案。注重健康/预防的主动管理、疾病的早期发现和慢性病的最佳维护，有可能在提高生活质量的同时降低医疗成本。传感器、低功耗电子产品的集成和小型化、无线网络、移动计算和云计算方面的最新技术进步使我们能够现代化和改变卫生保健服务的部署和提供方式。移动健康监测系统将无线身体区域网络(WBAN)与一系列智能和微型传感器、智能手机等个人设备以及可以通过互联网访问的服务器集成在一起，成为一项有前景的技术，可以在日常活动中实时、不引人注目地监测个人的健康和健康状况。前所未有的个人计算设备和智能传感器的激增使这种解决方案变得实用和负担得起。但还需要进一步的研究来探索设计空间，为给定的应用程序创建最佳解决方案，并在应对挑战的同时全面了解新技术提供的机会。该项目将提供资金，以创建mHealth，这是一个新的计算基础设施，以支持阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校移动健康和健康监测计算机系统的研究和教育。MHealth基础设施包括：a)各种可穿戴的无线传感器，用于监测用户的生理信号、身体运动和活动水平，以及一般环境条件；b)从传感器收集数据、分析数据、汇编个性化健康状态信息并通过互联网将数据上传到服务器的个人设备；以及c)运行数据库和服务的mHealth服务器，用于记录和分析多个用户的健康记录。MHealth基础设施将直接支持研究人员、他们的学生和他们的合作者在阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔护理学院、梅奥诊所、阿拉巴马大学伯明翰健康科学学院和伯明翰湖岸基金会进行的几项研究工作。此外，mHealth将被用于阿拉巴马大学亨茨维尔分校的高级设计课程序列和两门研究生课程，以改善学生的学术体验，并通过外展活动帮助招生。智能价值mHealth基础设施将使研究人员能够追求以下研究目标：1)探索用于健康监测的下一代无线可穿戴身体局域网的关键设计问题，包括其功能性、可靠性和能效；2)创建带有注释的公共数据库，在日常活动中使用生命体征和身体活动参数，以促进广域网中用于健康监测的进一步研究；3)构建WBAN研究原型，并为以下应用开发算法、固件和软件制品：监测和管理脊髓损伤患者的体力活动(使用UAB、Lakeshore)、监测和管理冠心病患者的非卧床康复(使用Mayo)、冠心病患者的健康状况评估(使用Mayo)以及监测护士的职业压力(使用UAHuntsville Nursing)。广泛影响获得mHealth基础设施将帮助调查人员及其合作者在多个多学科领域进行研究。如果成功，这些努力有望提高我们对可穿戴式无所不在的健康监测平台设计空间的理解，提高残疾人的生活质量，通过在普通人群中使用技术来促进健康行为，实现负担得起的门诊康复解决方案，并使健康状况能够及早检测。MHealth基础设施还将直接用于几个研究生和本科课程的教育和培训。

Healthcare systems are facing an imminent crisis precipitated by the confluence of current social, economic and demographic trends. According to the United States Census Bureau our total expenditures on healthcare reached $2.5 trillion in 2009 and are projected to reach 20% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product in 2020. These statistics suggest the need to seek more scalable and affordable healthcare solutions. A focus on proactive management of wellness / prevention, on early detection of disease, and on optimal maintenance of chronic conditions has the potential to reduce healthcare costs while increasing quality of life. Recent technological advances in sensors, integration and miniaturization of low-power electronics, wireless networking, mobile computing, and cloud computing allow us to modernize and change the way health care services are deployed and delivered.Mobile health monitoring systems that integrate wireless body area networks (WBANs) with a range of intelligent and miniature sensors, personal devices like smart phones, and servers that can be accessed over the Internet emerge as a promising technology for real-time, unobtrusive health and wellness monitoring of individuals during normal daily activities. Unprecedented proliferation of personal computing devices and smart sensors makes such solutions practical and affordable. But further research is needed to explore the design space and create optimal solution for a given application, and also to understand the full scope of the opportunities offered by the new technology while addressing the challenges.This project will provide funds to create mHealth, a new computing infrastructure to support research and education in computer systems for mobile health and wellness monitoring at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The mHealth infrastructure consists of: a) A variety of wearable wireless sensors for monitoring users' physiological signals, body movement and activity levels, along with general environmental conditions; b) Personal devices that collect data from the sensors, analyze it, compile personalized health status information, and upload data over the Internet to a server; and c) An mHealth server running databases and services for logging and analysis of health records from multiple users. The mHealth infrastructure will directly support several research efforts conducted by the investigators, their students, and their collaborators at the University of Alabama in Huntsville's College of Nursing, at the Mayo Clinic, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's School of Health Sciences, and at the Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham. In addition, mHealth will be used in a senior design course sequence and two graduate courses at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to improve the student academic experience and to help with recruiting efforts through outreach activities.Intellectual MeritThe mHealth infrastructure will enable the investigators to pursue the following research goals: 1) Exploring critical design issues in the next generation of wireless wearable body area networks for health monitoring including their functionality, reliability, and energy-efficiency; 2) Creating annotated public data repositories with vital signs and physical activity parameters during normal daily activities to promote further research in WBANs for health monitoring; 3) Building WBAN research prototypes and developing algorithms, firmware and software artifacts for applications such as monitoring and managing physical activity in people with spinal cord injury (with UAB, Lakeshore), monitoring and managing ambulatory rehabilitation of people with coronary disease (with Mayo), health status assessment of people with coronary disease (with Mayo), and monitoring of the occupational stress of nurses (with UAHuntsville Nursing).Broader ImpactAcquisition of the mHealth infrastructure will help the investigators and their collaborators pursue research in several multidisciplinary areas. If successful, these efforts promise to improve our understanding of the design space of wearable ubiquitous platforms for health monitoring, to improve quality of life of people with disabilities, to promote healthy behaviors through use of technology in the general population, to enable affordable solutions for ambulatory rehabilitation, and to enable early detection of health conditions. The mHealth infrastructure will also be used directly for education and training in several graduate and undergraduate courses.