mHealth Services to Link

Health and Environment

A/Prof. Vijay Sivaraman

School of Electrical Eng. & Telecoms.

University of New South Wales

http://www2.ee.unsw.edu.au/~vijay/

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Overview I am a technologist:

Interested in developing devices, tools, software and

systems to improve quality of life

Skills: developing hardware and software, apps, web-

based (cloud) services, data analytics

What I lack:

Domain experience:

Healthcare providers, age-care workers, community

What I’d like to do:

Engage with domain specialists to help in development

of technology for healthcare

Explore ways to speed up technology adoption cycle

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Project 1: Body-Wearable Health Devices Non-intrusive wearable devices

Big market: Toumaz, Apple, GE, …

~10 grams, measure ECG, glucose, etc.

Chronic disease management

Challenges:

Severe battery limitation (~20mWh)

Adaptive-power communication

Privacy and authenticity

Automatic key generation

Low-cost signature and provenance checking S. Xiao, A. Dhamdhere, V. Sivaraman, and A. Burdett "Transmission Power Control in Body Area Sensor Networks for

Healthcare Monitoring", IEEE JSAC, Special Issue on Body Area Networking, 27(1):37-48, Jan 2009.

S. T. Ali, V. Sivaraman and D. Ostry, "Eliminating Reconciliation Cost in Secret Key Generation for Body-Worn Health

Monitoring Devices", IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, to appear in 2013.

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Project 2: Liveable Environment for Older People Environmental factors in active ageing

Pedestrian paths, open spaces, street furniture, …

Not just what fails, but what enables

Objectives:

Create empirical database for local community

Help local govt. in decision making, empower citizens via engagement

Our solution: app, database, mapping, analysis

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Project 2: Liveability (contd.)

App in apple store; android version coming

Walk-n-talk group sessions in Wollongong, Tweed Heads

http://www.liveable.eng.unsw.edu.au/

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Project 3: Air Pollution

1.4 billion urban residents live

in areas with air pollution

above guidelines [WHO]

2 million deaths worldwide

2.3% of deaths in Australia

NSW: $4.7billion in health costs

Chronic exposure

cardiovascular and respiratory

mortality and morbidity

Acute short-term inhalation

exacerbates existing conditions

asthma, COPD, heart disease

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Air Pollution Monitoring in Sydney DECCW runs 15 stations in various locations

Data published and updated on hourly basis

AQI reported; Health warnings posted

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Images From: www.health.nsw.gov.au

Limitations of Current System

Poor spatial resolution

Sites separated by tens of kilometers

Need interpolation models:

Complex: land topography, chemical compositions

Inaccurate: meteorological conditions

Do not reflect actual exposures of individuals

Spatial heterogeneity

Concentrations can change over short distances

Mobility patterns of users

Time spent and activity level at home, work, travel

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New System: Internet-of-Things (IoT) “Crowd source” data from users (drivers)

Users upload pollution measurement as they drive

Measurements stored in “cloud”

Displayed as pollution map in real-time

Can build cloud-based tools and services around it

Advantages:

Cost-effective: mobile sensors cover more ground

E.g. sensor on one bus can cover tens of kilometers

Better spatial resolution for same sensors

30-50 mobile sensors can cover a city well

Personalized tools

Personal exposure meter, route-planning, …

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Pollution Measurement Devices

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Web and App Services

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Pollution map live at: http://www.pollution.ee.unsw.edu.au

Challenges Needs expertise in:

Sensors, calibration (Chemistry)

Hardware, communications design (Electrical Eng.)

Database server, cloud computing (Computer Sc.)

Pollution modeling (Atmospheric Sc.)

Mobile phone applications (Computer Sc.)

Health outcome interpretation (Medical)

Mass production and deployment strategy ?

How to ensure data is of good quality ?

Uptake of personal tools ?

How to make clinical inferences ?

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Conclusions

Emergence of several “personalised” technologies:

Wearable monitoring devices

Internet-of-Things and cloud services

Mobile apps

Looking forward:

“Patchwork” of cute tools – how to leverage their value?

Integration into mainstream healthcare system?

Increase rate of adoption of ICT tools?

Technology development is racing ahead, faster than we

can work out how to make them useful.

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