EAGER: Towards a multimodal smart textile medical monitoring system for Neonatal ICUs

美国早产儿的比率正在上升，每年每1000名活产婴儿中有78名进入新生儿重症监护室（NICU）。由于出生体重低和身体系统发育不全，早产儿面临短期和长期健康问题的风险很高。然而，到目前为止，NICU仍然使用基于凝胶的粘性电极粘在早产儿脆弱，发育不全的皮肤上。研究报告称，这些电极可能导致皮肤伤害，如皮疹、刺激、击穿和剥离。此外，这些电极使用长导线连接，这使得护士的重症监护不方便、繁琐且耗时。干燥粘性电极通常会导致与皮肤的连接松动，并最终影响医疗监测的质量。由于长电线，父母发现很难提供皮肤到皮肤/袋鼠照顾他们的婴儿，而在新生儿重症监护室。EAGER提案的中心目标是设计和测试一种新型的智能电子纺织品系统，一种可以增强NICU医疗监护实践的胸带。该提案结合了该团队在智能纺织品、生理监测、生物信号处理和以人为本的技术设计等领域的专业知识，以满足NICU对智能、安全和联网监测系统的迫切需求。除了EAGER的科学影响外，拟议的工作还将通过解决NICU中的多个现有差距来促进国家健康。教育和推广计划将为妇女和代表性不足的少数民族提供培训机会，并将开发K-12课程。该项目的总体目标是设计和测试一种新的以NICU为中心的无线医疗监测技术，该技术由生物相容性智能纺织材料设计，不需要粘合剂凝胶。目标1将专注于以NICU为中心的智能纺织品医疗监护系统的设计和开发。目标2将专注于所提出的智能电子纺织品的表征和评估。 该项目将从NICU的民族志研究开始，包括NICU护士的焦点小组，以及对NICU婴儿父母的采访，以了解与为早产儿提供护理相关的挑战。这将导致无线智能纺织技术的新型功能原型的开发，该技术可以提供可靠的医疗信号监测，并提高舒适度。该项目包括一项可行性研究，以衡量拟议的智能纺织品在健康成人和健康婴儿身上的性能和可用性。该研究将使我们能够开发信号质量指数和噪声表征的信号分析方法，这些方法对于解决NICU中因皮肤电极接触不良而引起的误报问题至关重要。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并且通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The rate of premature babies is rising in the US affecting 78 per 1000 live births admitted to Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) yearly. Due to low birth weight and underdeveloped body systems, premature babies are at a high risk of experiencing both short-term and long-term health issues. However, to date, NICUs still use gel-based sticky electrodes glued to the fragile, underdeveloped skin of premature babies. Studies have reported that these electrodes could cause skin harm such as rashes, irritation, breakdown, and stripping. Moreover, these electrodes are connected using long wires that make the critical care for nurses inconvenient, tedious, and time consuming. Drying sticky electrodes often lead to a loose connection with the skin and ultimately compromise the quality of medical monitoring. Because of long wires, parents find it difficult to provide skin-to-skin/kangaroo care to their babies while in NICU. The central objective of this EAGER proposal is to design and test a novel smart e-textile system, a chest belt that can enhance medical monitoring practices in NICU. The proposal synergizes the team’s expertise in areas of smart textile, physiological monitoring, biosignal processing, and human-centered technology design to address critical need for smart, safe, and connected monitoring systems in NICUs. In addition to the scientific impacts of this EAGER, the proposed work will advance national health by addressing multiple existing gaps in NICUs. The educational and outreach plans will provide training opportunities for women and under-represented minorities and will also develop a K-12 curriculum.The overarching goal of the project is to design and test a new NICU-centered wireless medical monitoring technology that is designed from biocompatible smart textile materials requiring no adhesive gel. Aim 1 will focus on NICU centered design and development of smart textile-based medical monitoring systems. Aim 2 will focus on characterization and evaluation of the proposed smart e-textile. The project will start with an ethnographic study of the NICU, focus groups involving NICU nurses, and interviews of parents of babies in the NICU to understand the challenges associated with providing care to premature babies. This will lead to the development of a novel functional prototype of a wireless smart textile technology that can offer reliable monitoring of medical signals with improved comfort. The project includes a feasibility study to measure the performance and usability of the proposed smart textile on healthy adults and healthy infants. The study will enable us to develop signal analysis methods for signal quality index and noise characterization that are critical to address the issue of false alarms in NICU caused by poor skin-electrode contacts.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.