WELCOME is an ambitious project aiming to develop an integrated care approach for continuous monitoring, early diagnosis and detection of worsening events and treatment of patients suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) with comorbidities Chronic Heart Failure, Diabetes, Anxiety and Depression.
The WELCOME solution for the patient will be based on:1. An adjustable, wearable and washable vest providing continuous monitoring of a large number of sensors each one measuring various physiological signals, like chest sounds, pleural effusion, tachycardia or arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation etc,. The vest will be comfortable, inconspicuous, and easy to put on by the patient, it will require simple maintenance (simultaneous sensor recharging, normal washing procedure) and can be modified according to each patient's individual needs.2. Wearable sensors for measuring blood trends like glucose, cholesterols, triglycerides, potassium, serum creatinine, blood pressure etc in a periodic basis.3. Inhaler devices for measuring and evaluating the medical adherence of the patients.
Remote, continuous monitoring and analysis of patient multi-parametric data, such as physiological, environmental, emotional and genetic data, will be used for designing the personalized integrated care programs ranging from self-care guidance and regulation (e.g e-coaching) at home and outdoors to professional primary and secondary health-care support (e.g including telemonitoring and remote support or comprehensive expert support at the clinic). The process will be facilitated by a cloud based Decision Support System, providing statistical/intelligent analysis of the therapy policies and patient conditions enhanced by multiple patients' data fusion and discovery of patterns on the patient's disease progress.
Great attention will be paid to the small-scale validation of the project and its impact on healthcare in five countries (Greece, UK, Ireland, Germany and Nethelands).