IEEE Educational Events

Recent advances in digital health technologies are enabling biomedical researchers to reframe health optimization and disease treatment in a patient-specific, personalized manner. Rather than a one-size-fitsall paradigm, the charge is for a particular profile to be fit to each patient, and for disease treatment (or wellness) strategies to then be tailored accordingly. Wearable sensing can play an important role in this effort by augmenting existing research in -omics and medical imaging towards better developing such personalized models and phenotypic assays for patients, and in continuously adjusting such models to optimize therapies in real-time to meet patients’ changing needs. While in many instances the focus of such efforts is on disease treatment, optimizing performance for healthy individuals is also a compelling need. This talk will focus on research on non-invasive wearable sensing of human physiology, with application to biomechanics, cardiovascular, and pulmonary monitoring applications. A specific focus of the talk will be on recent technologies leveraging acoustics and vibration sensing for these applications, including the sounds emitted by the joints during movement, the vibrations of the body in response to the heartbeat, and lung sounds. Ultimately, such technologies can enable personalized titration of care and optimization of performance to reduce injuries and rehabilitation time for athletes and soldiers, improve the quality of life for patients with heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and reduce overall healthcare costs.