IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Central New England Chapter Tuesday, May 10, 2005 Informal Discussion: 6:00 PM Program: 6:30 PM RESHAPING HEALTH CARE USING WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY Dr. Paolo Bonato Director, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and Assistant Professor Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Harvard Medical School ABSTRACT Significant progress in computer technologies, solid-state micro-sensors, and telecommunications has expanded the possibilities for individual health monitoring systems. A variety of compact, unobtrusive sensors are available today, and it is expected that more will be available in the near future. This talk will focus on the recent advances that are shaping the development of wearable systems to monitor patients in the clinical setting and the community. Various system configurations for measuring functional motor activities and associated systemic responses will be compared, such as wireless arrays and sensor suits. Data-gathering will be discussed, with particular emphasis on PDA-based systems that temporarily store physiological signals before uploading them to a server located in a clinical center. The upload may occur via a wireless local network (e.g., IEEE 802.11b/g, Bluetooth) installed in the inpatient unit or the patient's home. Further, data processing using neuro-fuzzy inference systems will be presented, and the use of expert systems to assign priorities to required clinical interventions and alert clinicians will be addressed. The integration of laboratory and clinical assessments with data gathered in the field will be discussed in the context of designing clinical interventions aimed at enhancing mobility in individuals with cardio-pulmonary, musculo-skeletal, and/or neurological disabilities. Preliminary results from three ongoing projects will be summarized: monitoring exercise compliance in pulmonary rehabilitation patients, characterizing motor patterns of post-stroke hemiplegic individuals, and assessing prosthetic designs for above-knee amputees. Issues related to the design of signal processing procedures for analyzing data recorded using wearable technology will be discussed. Feature extraction, clustering, pattern recognition, and data mining techniques are all essential for overcoming the inherent challenges of analyzing data gathered in the field. Topics of investigation in this research area range from identifying motor activities to assessing quality of movement. Through development of innovative, reliable, and unobtrusive means to monitor the health status of individuals in the field, researchers expect to provide clinicians with information complementary to that typically gathered in clinical settings. This would enable clinicians to more precisely tailor their rehabilitative strategies to the daily lifestyle of the patient and to remotely track and quantify the patient's progression toward recovery. SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY Paolo Bonato received an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy (1989), and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Universita di Roma "La Sapienza", Roma, Italy (1995). From 1996 to 2002 he was Research Assistant Professor at the NeuroMuscular Research Center of Boston University, Boston, MA. He is currently Director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston, MA, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School. Dr Bonato is also a member of the affiliated faculty of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His research work includes rehabilitation engineering, electromyography, and biomechanics of movement. He has developed intelligent signal processing tools for investigating problems in neurophysiology and neuro-fuzzy inference systems for the analysis of data recorded using wearable sensors. Dr. Bonato is Senior Member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology and Council Member of the International Society of Electrophysiology and Kinesiology. He is Editor-in-Chief of Journal on NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. MEETING INFORMATION The IEEE Robotics and Automation Society will meet on Tuesday, May 10, 2005, at Wellesley High School at 6:00 PM for informal discussions and for the formal presentation between 6:30 and 7:30 PM. The group will have a no-host dinner afterwards at Bertucci's, where more conversations can take place with the guest speaker. The meetings are open to the general public, and all are welcome at the dinner afterwards. For more information, contact the chapter chairperson at chair@robotics-boston.org. DIRECTIONS From Route 128, take either Route 9 or Route 16 west. From the junction of Routes 9 and 16, follow Route 16 (Washington Street) west past the Wellesley Hills commuter rail station (within walking distance of the school), then turn left onto Rice Street. Wellesley High School is on the left. Parking is available in a lot just beyond the school. For a web map showing the location of Wellesley High School, go to the Yahoo map site at http://maps.yahoo.com/ and enter the following information in the indicated locations: Address:50 Rice St City, State or ZIP:Wellesley, MA The star marker is misplaced slightly to the south. Imagine it about 1 cm toward the top of the map at Rice St. The GPS coordinates for Rice St in front of the entrance to the high school building are approximately as follows: N 42 18.137' W 71 16.811' The GPS coordinates for the parking lot in front of the entrance to Bertucci's are approximately as follows: N 42 18.492' W 71 16.691' For more information about our Section and Chapter, visit our web site at our registered domain URL http://www.robotics-boston.org/