Emil Jovanov - US grants

The next generation of wireless is in distributed sensor networks. Applications in this area are a rapidly growing research area. The project will investigate possibilities for coordinated action to improve the energy efficiency in distributed sensor network on all levels, from software to component design to system integration. The overall goal and impact of this will be the decrease in the cost of sensor network, allowing wider, more capable deployments for generalized information gathering and surveillance. A test-bed environment for energy-efficiency and performance evaluation of reconfigurable hierarchical networks of sensors will be established at the Center for Nanosensor Technology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Another anticipated benefit of such intelligent surveillance sensor networks is the extension of the same principles to everyday applications of distributed sensor networks.

Healthcare systems are facing an imminent crisis precipitated by the confluence of current social, economic and demographic trends. According to the United States Census Bureau our total expenditures on healthcare reached $2.5 trillion in 2009 and are projected to reach 20% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product in 2020. These statistics suggest the need to seek more scalable and affordable healthcare solutions. A focus on proactive management of wellness / prevention, on early detection of disease, and on optimal maintenance of chronic conditions has the potential to reduce healthcare costs while increasing quality of life. Recent technological advances in sensors, integration and miniaturization of low-power electronics, wireless networking, mobile computing, and cloud computing allow us to modernize and change the way health care services are deployed and delivered.

Mobile health monitoring systems that integrate wireless body area networks (WBANs) with a range of intelligent and miniature sensors, personal devices like smart phones, and servers that can be accessed over the Internet emerge as a promising technology for real-time, unobtrusive health and wellness monitoring of individuals during normal daily activities. Unprecedented proliferation of personal computing devices and smart sensors makes such solutions practical and affordable. But further research is needed to explore the design space and create optimal solution for a given application, and also to understand the full scope of the opportunities offered by the new technology while addressing the challenges.

This project will provide funds to create mHealth, a new computing infrastructure to support research and education in computer systems for mobile health and wellness monitoring at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The mHealth infrastructure consists of: a) A variety of wearable wireless sensors for monitoring users' physiological signals, body movement and activity levels, along with general environmental conditions; b) Personal devices that collect data from the sensors, analyze it, compile personalized health status information, and upload data over the Internet to a server; and c) An mHealth server running databases and services for logging and analysis of health records from multiple users. The mHealth infrastructure will directly support several research efforts conducted by the investigators, their students, and their collaborators at the University of Alabama in Huntsville's College of Nursing, at the Mayo Clinic, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's School of Health Sciences, and at the Lakeshore Foundation in Birmingham. In addition, mHealth will be used in a senior design course sequence and two graduate courses at the University of Alabama in Huntsville to improve the student academic experience and to help with recruiting efforts through outreach activities.

Intellectual Merit
The mHealth infrastructure will enable the investigators to pursue the following research goals: 1) Exploring critical design issues in the next generation of wireless wearable body area networks for health monitoring including their functionality, reliability, and energy-efficiency; 2) Creating annotated public data repositories with vital signs and physical activity parameters during normal daily activities to promote further research in WBANs for health monitoring; 3) Building WBAN research prototypes and developing algorithms, firmware and software artifacts for applications such as monitoring and managing physical activity in people with spinal cord injury (with UAB, Lakeshore), monitoring and managing ambulatory rehabilitation of people with coronary disease (with Mayo), health status assessment of people with coronary disease (with Mayo), and monitoring of the occupational stress of nurses (with UAHuntsville Nursing).

Broader Impact
Acquisition of the mHealth infrastructure will help the investigators and their collaborators pursue research in several multidisciplinary areas. If successful, these efforts promise to improve our understanding of the design space of wearable ubiquitous platforms for health monitoring, to improve quality of life of people with disabilities, to promote healthy behaviors through use of technology in the general population, to enable affordable solutions for ambulatory rehabilitation, and to enable early detection of health conditions. The mHealth infrastructure will also be used directly for education and training in several graduate and undergraduate courses.