ICT Challenge 5: Objective ICT-2011.5.1: Personal Health Systems (PHS)
a) Personal Health Systems for remote management of diseases, treatment and rehabilitation, outside hospitals and care centres. Research will support innovations at system level and at component level if required. Solutions will be based on closed-loop approaches and will integrate components into wearable, portable or implantable devices
coupled with appropriate platforms and services. Emphasis will be placed on: (i) autoadaptive, self-calibrating and energy-efficient modules with multi-sensing, advanced on-board processing, communication and actuation capabilities; (ii) accuracy of measurements as well as remote control and reliable operation of the devices/systems; (iii) context-aware, multiparametric monitoring of health parameters, activity, lifestyle, ambient environment and operational parameters of the devices; (iv) analysis, interpretation and use of the multiparametric data, in conjunction with established or newly created medical knowledge, for shared patient-doctor decision support systems; (v) clinical workflows, guidelines and patient pathways to support remote applications; and (vi) education and motivation of users.
Each project shall undertake high risk research addressing only one of the domains below.
a1) Neurodegenerative diseases: focusing on remote management and treatment of patients at the point of need, addressing also the needs of their carers. Heterogeneous data (e.g., genetic data, images, movement recordings, interaction and behavioural data) will be used for assessment of patients’ health status. Depending on the disease addressed, proposed approaches may employ neural recording, neurostimulation and/or drug delivery systems.
a2) Rehabilitation of stroke and neurological conditions: providing patient services at home, with telesupervision by health professionals as and when required. Solutions may build on robotic and haptic technologies, wearable systems, implants, human-computer interfaces, web services or virtual reality environments to facilitate continuity of personalised cognitive and functional rehabilitation. Heterogeneous data (e.g., biofeedback, monitoring of limb movements, behavioural monitoring and analysis) and predictive models will be used to assess patient status and progress, monitor risk factors and predict new episodes.
a3) Liver failure: ICT-enabled artificial liver to facilitate detoxification as remote transient therapy at the point of need, offering continuous care from hospital to home settings. All projects will adopt scenario-based design and will develop novel service models to support transferability of healthcare outside hospitals and care centres. The target group is
only patients with diagnosed conditions (not healthy individuals). In addition to strong involvement of clinical users, projects will also engage experts in regulatory approval. Projects will address user acceptance, patient compliance, patient data security and confidentiality. They will also address interoperability issues related to heterogeneous data
sources, devices and links with electronic health records; the use of standards and of any suitable open software platform is recommended. Validation will aim to demonstrate the proof of concept, efficiency gains and, if possible, cost effectiveness of the proposed solution. Validation should include comparison versus currently accepted gold standards and include quantitative indicators of the added value and potential impact of the proposed solutions.
b) Intelligent systems for the analysis of multi-parametric data. Projects will focus exclusively on analysing multi-parametric data in the context of Personal Health Systems used for prevention or remote management of clearly targeted diseases or co-morbidities. Multi-parametric data may include physiological measurements, genetic data, medical images, laboratory examinations and other measurements related to a person's activity, lifestyle and surrounding environment. The developed systems will process and interpret such data for accurate alerting and signalling of risks and for supporting healthcare professionals in their decision making. This may be either by (i) correlating the multi-parametric data with established biomedical knowledge to derive clinically relevant indicators and/or (ii) creating new medical knowledge for diagnosing worsening of conditions and prompting early intervention. Projects may use patient data already available in databases or from other research projects or pilots. Creation of new patient data with the use of previously developed and tested monitoring systems is also possible. Adaptation of existing monitoring systems is eligible, but the development of new monitoring systems is not in scope. Projects will pay attention to security and protection of patient data. Validation will aim to demonstrate, with quantitative indicators, the effectiveness and the medical and economic benefits.
c) One Coordination and Support Action to deliver roadmaps for research and support to wide use of mobile eHealth (mHealth) solutions for lifestyle and disease management. The roadmaps will address elements such as: technology options for applications and services; any need for dedicated radio frequency bands for continuous provision of care; risk management, user acceptance, security and privacy; any need for update of medical guidelines, including
methodology to deliver new knowledge to medical professionals and patients; business cases; reimbursement; and mapping of future mHealth applications to the regulatory framework of medical devices. Relevant experiences in developing countries will be considered.