Facilitating health and wellbeing by developing systems for early recognition of urinary tract infections - Feather

尿路感染(UTI)是最常见的感染类型之一，全世界有9200多万人受到影响。当早期诊断时，用抗生素可以很容易地解决UTI。然而，如果不进行治疗，它可能会导致尿毒症(160万人死亡)、肾脏损伤和最终死亡。识别尿路感染的早期症状可能是具有挑战性的，年轻人和老年人以及有潜在健康状况的人的症状是不同的。此外，没有一种症状，而是一系列表明一个人有尿路感染的症状。这些包括尿液的变化：颜色、气味、频率；大小便失禁、疼痛、精神错乱、躁动、体温、颤抖和睡眠变化。这种混合的症状使有关患者和/或其照顾者难以识别尿路感染的迹象。该项目将连续收集有关个人在家中活动的数据。通过拥有日常生活活动的数据，就有可能确定变化。Feather平台将结合这些数据点来识别UTI的出现。事实上，个人或照顾者很难看到这一点。因此，Feather项目将能够在一个人自己动手之前发出尿路感染调查警报，从而能够进行早期干预，以便迅速获得适当的治疗。例如，以下都可以是受尿路感染症状、日常行为模式(如水壶使用、行走速度的变化)、通过与智能代理(例如嵌入式机器人)交互而产生的认知功能影响的行为指标。Feather项目可以使全科医生有时间等待实验室结果，以进行尿液测试，以确保适当的抗生素处方，从而降低NHS处方的成本，并改善患者的结果。早期诊断将减少在急诊室就诊的患者数量，并减少发展为尿毒症、肾衰竭和最终死亡的病例数量。我们将与利益相关者合作，共同设计、共同实施和共同评估这一特色项目。

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are one of the most common types of infection, impacting more than 92 million people worldwide. When diagnosed early, UTI's can readily be resolved with antibiotics. However, left untreated, it can lead to urosepsis (>1.6 million deaths), kidney damage and ultimately death. Identifying the early symptoms of a UTI can be challenging, symptoms are different in younger and older people and people with underlying health conditions. In addition, there is no one symptom but a collection of symptoms that indicate a person has a UTI. These include changes to urine: colour, smell, frequency; incontinence, pain, confusion, agitation delirium, temperature, shaking and changes in sleep. This concoction of symptoms is what makes identifying the signs of a UTI difficult for the person concerned and/or their carers. This project will gather data about the activities of an individual in their home on a continuous basis. By having data on activities of daily living, it is possible to identify changes. The Feather platform will combine these data points to recognise the emergence of a UTI. This is in fact quite difficult for an individual themselves or a carer to see. Thus, the Feather project will be able to raise an alert for investigation of a UTI, before a person could do it themselves, enabling early intervention, to get appropriate treatment quickly. For example, the following can all be indicators of behaviours that are impacted by the symptoms of UTI's, patterns for activities of daily behaviour, e.g. kettle use, change in walking pace, cognitive function through interaction with an intelligent agent, e.g. an embodied robot.The Feather project could enable a GP to have the time to wait for lab results to urine tests to ensure appropriate prescription of antibiotics, reducing the cost to the NHS of prescriptions and improving outcomes for the patient. Early diagnosis should reduce the number of patients presenting at A&E and reduce the number of cases developing to urosepsis, kidney failure and ultimately death.Working with stakeholders, we will co-design, co-implement and co-evaluate the Feature project.