SCH: INT: Personalized Wearable Metabolic Rate Monitors and Learning Social Networks-A Synergy for Smart Connected Health

肥胖是一种与生活方式有关的疾病，已经成为全国和世界范围内的一个主要社会问题。肥胖和超重的严重流行构成了重大的社会和公共卫生挑战；特别是因为肥胖是增加疾病风险的根本原因，从高血压到糖尿病和中风，甚至癌症。我们的目标是通过非侵入性、个性化、负担得起的持续诊断来改变健康和医疗实践，使用户能够监控他们的脂肪代谢并控制他们的体重减轻，从而帮助管理肥胖或代谢紊乱。这一目标将通过新的工程方法和科学进步来实现，这些方法将皮肤气体的监测与代谢率和脂肪燃烧联系起来。这项工作旨在通过可穿戴和无线设备原型对基于皮肤的诊断新概念进行实证验证，这些设备原型是非侵入性的(没有微针)，不依赖汗水，可以连续且不费力地使用。这项工作将使具有广泛适用性的主要创新成为可能，包括化学致动装置、可穿戴天线、射频能量收集、气密性包装技术、代谢率生理模型以及将皮肤丙酮作为代谢生物标志物进行测试。新的诊断方法是负担得起的，非侵入性的，非侵入性的，证明了对个体代谢状态的实时评估。新的劳动力将接受跨学科实践方面的培训。外展活动和互动游戏将针对当地社区和对持续健康监测和体重管理感兴趣的学生进行教育。总而言之，该项目有望给基于皮肤气体检测的廉价、无处不在、非侵入性、非侵入性医疗诊断带来革命性的变化。这项工作涉及新的工程方法(皮肤气体传感、无电池可穿戴设备)以及计算机/信息科学(生理预测模型)和社会控制论的创新。这项新的可穿戴式监测技术的核心是一种新提出的智能材料，该材料设计成在暴露于皮肤丙酮时表现出可逆的驱动行为，丙酮是一种已知与脂肪代谢直接相关的化学物质。这种材料将与一种新型的电磁换能器集成在一起，该换能器实现在导电螺纹上，将形状变形转换为电压变化。通过集成电路和无线传输功能，所有组件都将嵌入到可穿戴的皮带中，通过先进的防水和防气玻璃材料将其与环境隔离。将进行人体主体实验，以获得丙酮和脂肪代谢之间的准确动力学关系，并对新的监测技术进行校准和测试。最后，利用社会控制论的先进技术的开源群件工具将被用来处理群体中个体的皮肤丙酮测量，并通过使用社交网络为改善健康和体重控制的行为调整提供有用的反馈。该系统的所有方面都将通过样本高效的多层次优化算法进行迭代改进。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Obesity is a lifestyle-related illness that has become a major social problem nationally and worldwide. The significant prevalence of obesity and overweight poses a major social and public health challenge; particularly as obesity is a root cause for increasing the risk of illnesses from hypertension, to diabetes and stroke, and even cancer. Our objective is to transform health and medical practices through non-invasive, personalized, affordable and continuous diagnostics, allowing users to monitor their fat metabolism and control their weight loss, thereby helping manage obesity or metabolic disorders. This objective will be realized by novel engineering approaches and scientific advancements that relate the monitoring of skin gases to metabolic rates and fat burning. This work aims to validate empirically the new concept of skin-based diagnostics via wearable and wireless device prototypes that are non-intrusive (no microneedles) and not dependent on sweat and can be used continuously and without effort. Major innovations with broad applicability to become enabled by this work include chemo- actuating devices, wearable antennas, RF power harvesting, gas-proof packaging technology, physiological models for metabolic rate, and testing skin acetone as a metabolic biomarker. Novel diagnostics that are affordable, non-invasive, non-intrusive, proving real-time assessment of the metabolic state of the individual. A new workforce will be trained in cross-disciplinary practices. Outreach events and interactive games will target education of local community and students interested in continuous health monitoring and weight management. In summary, this project is expected to revolutionize inexpensive, ubiquitous, non-invasive, non-intrusive, medical diagnostics based on skin-gas detection. This work involves novel engineering approaches (skin-gas sensing, battery-less wearable devices) together with innovations in computer/information science (physiological predictive models) and social cybernetics. At the core of this new wearable monitoring technology sits a novel proposed smart material designed to exhibit reversible actuating behavior when exposed to skin acetone, a chemical known to directly relate to fat metabolism. This material will be integrated with a novel electromagnetic transducer realized on conductive threads to convert shape deformations into voltage changes. Through the integration of circuitry and wireless transmission capabilities all components will be embedded into a wearable skin strip that will be isolated from the environment via advanced water and gas-proof glassy materials. Human subject experiments will be performed to obtain an accurate dynamical relationship between acetone and fat-metabolism and for calibrating and testing the novel monitoring technology. Finally, open source groupware tools harnessing advances in social cybernetics will be employed to process skin acetone measurements from individuals in a group and provide useful feedback on behavioral modifications towards improving health and weight control through the use of social networks. All aspects of the system will be improved iteratively via sample-efficient multi-level optimization algorithms.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.