The diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of lung diseases depend on the availability of medical products {stethoscopes, spirometers, plethysmographs, X-ray, CT, MRI & electrical impedance tomography (EIT)} that are monitoring the lung disease progression and treatment. Such medical products are placed inside hospitals, labs, special care units and healthcare professionals’ sites, requiring patients to have regular visits to assess their status and receive therapy treatments. However, such examination methods are not portable (with the exception of stethoscopes and simple spirometers) and allow a momentary patient assessment. Short-term trends in disease development, either deterioration or improvement, are not accessible. Up to now, continuous, wearable and real-time monitoring, especially in remote settings (e.g. patients’ home) is not available. Other medical devices, especially the radiological ones, are massive, expensive, requiring specialized personnel, increasing the radiation load on the patient. Moreover, the fusion of both visual and sound information, is difficult, leaving their interpretation on the healthcare profession’s experience. WELMO with the adoption of Application-Specific-Integrated-Circuits (ASIC) will be prototyped and demonstrated for Electrical Impedance tomography (EIT) and for lung sounds. The incorporation of low-cost and power electronics will enable for the first time the combination of both visual & sound information enabling the systematic, accurate and real-time evaluation of respiratory conditions. The collected signals can be securely stored and processed, towards revealing linkages with specific clinical outcomes. WELMO comfortable vest is enabling the effective and accurate monitoring of the lungs, through the collection, fusion and interpretation of sound and image signals with innovative algorithms. According to EUROSTAT, there are 382.000+ deaths in the EU-28 from respiratory diseases, (7.7 % of all deaths). 235+ million people world-wide suffer from asthma (WHO). 40 billion Euros are wasted annually across EU through lost productivity due to employee absenteeism related to COPD & asthma. WELMO holistic solution is expected to have a radical impact: By continuously monitoring lung function with novel methods of signal acquisition of respiratory patients. By providing physicians with enhanced awareness of their patient's health status and enable early identification of disease exacerbations. By minimizing the healthcare associated costs due to earlier detection of disease deterioration and the resulting fewer hospitalizations. It will be one of the first applications of effective lung imaging, giving insights to patients to understand their disease. WELMO targets to the development of a high-usable, easy-to-wear, machine-washable wearable that will enable the efficient & accurate real-time monitoring of the lungs. Main Objectives are: To develop and produce miniaturized and low-power sensors. To use smart-garments and cabling: enabling the integration of all sensors in a single wearable. To align with relevant standards regarding developed electronics. To perform real-time acquisition of sensor data accelerating the decision-making process. To design and develop algorithms for the lung sound signal analysis. To develop a Decision Support System to perform accurate assessment of respiratory function deficits & to assist, even not EIT-expert, in timely detection of lung abnormalities. To link measured signals with certain lung functions and clinical conditions. To develop a set of secure apps for enabling the dynamic presentation of the results.
