STTR Phase I: Advanced and Remote Screening, Monitoring and Rehabilitation of Cognitive Health

这项小型企业技术转移（STTR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是通过设计和验证智能椅子和基于健康数据的智能可穿戴新解决方案，改进和自动化医院设施中使用的认知健康筛查机制。美国有超过1600万人患有认知障碍（这个数字还在迅速增长）。一个令人震惊的事实是，患有认知障碍的人报告的住院时间是患有其他健康状况的人的三倍多。这些正在推动改进认知健康评估解决方案的发展，这些解决方案将在日常生活的早期发现认知能力下降的细微迹象。在这些市场需求的推动下，本项目旨在开发一种先进和远程的认知健康筛查和监测系统，并实现认知康复的游戏化用户交互。这项已开发的技术具有很大的潜力，可以帮助有痴呆倾向的老年人（从轻度认知障碍到阿尔茨海默病），并慢慢恢复认知能力下降的患者（中风幸存者和正在治疗的癌症患者）。本项目所设计的平台和开发的认知评分算法将在医院的真实患者研究中进行测试和验证。拟议的项目是一项研究、开发和临床研究工作，旨在设计和验证一种用于认知健康的先进远程筛查、监测和康复解决方案。这种认知健康管理系统将通过智能椅子和定制可穿戴设备（单独使用）的多模态传感和基于机器学习的行为数据分析的技术创新，以及认知心理学驱动的游戏化互动和干预来实现。当回答认知问卷时，智能椅子系统将捕捉患者的非语言反应和压力模式。智能可穿戴系统（与附近的几个定制蓝牙信标一起使用）将在医院家庭式厨房设施中执行日常生活认知任务（如烤蛋糕或饼干）的同时，分析患者的正常状态、健忘、混乱。主要研究目标包括基于椅子的认知问卷和基于可穿戴设备的认知任务绩效质量两种基于用户反应的认知健康评分机制。它还将为认知康复和行为强化设计用户交互和干预措施。这是一个非常有影响力的项目，团队与医院和神经科医生直接合作，并接触到大量患有各种认知障碍的患者（符合IRB和HIPAA）。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I project is to improve and automate cognitive health screening mechanisms used in hospital facilities, by designing and validating a smart chair and a smart wearable based health data-centric novel solution. U.S. population has more than 16 million people (this is rapidly growing further) living with cognitive impairment. There is alarming fact that people with cognitive impairment report more than three times as many hospital stays as individuals with other health conditions. These are driving development of improved cognitive health assessment solutions, that will detect subtle signs of cognitive decline early in daily life. Motivated by these markets in demand, this project is designed to develop a system for advanced and remote screening and monitoring of cognitive health, and also enabling gamified user interaction for cognitive rehabilitation. The developed technology has large potential to help elderly people prone to levels of dementia (from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's disease), and slowly rehabilitating patients dealing with cognitive decline (stroke survivors and cancer patients under treatment). The designed platform and cognitive scoring algorithms developed in this project will be tested and validated with real patient study at hospital facility.The proposed project is a research, development and clinical studies effort to design and validate an advanced and remote screening, monitoring and rehabilitation solution for cognitive health. Such cognitive health management system will be achieved by technological innovation in multi-modal sensing and machine learning based behavioral data analytics from a smart chair and a custom wearable device (used separately), along with cognitive psychology driven gamified interactions and interventions. The smart chair system will capture patient non-verbal response and stress patterns, when answering to cognitive questionnaire. The smart wearable system (used with a few custom Bluetooth beacons in proximity) will analyze normalcy, forgetfulness, confusion in patient, while performing daily life cognitive tasks (such as baking a cake or cookie) in home-like kitchen facility in hospital. The main research objective includes two novel cognitive health scoring mechanism from user response with chair based cognitive questionnaire, and wearable based cognitive task performance quality. It will also design user interactions and interventions for cognitive rehabilitation and behavior reinforcement. This is a very impactful project with team's direct ongoing collaboration with hospital and neurologist, and access to large number of patients with range of cognitive disabilities (in accordance with IRB and HIPAA compliance).