Personalized biomedical technology for health care

Personalized biomedical technology for health care

The University of Seville designs an e-health program to improve the quality of its patients

   The Group of Biomedical Engineering (GIB) University of Seville (US) Ciber-BBN investigates, in the context of the new paradigm of 'e-health', the design and development of intelligent devices and systems for the supervised and personalized control of the care of health. According to a statement from the Hispalense, 'e-health' can be defined as the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in health care processes, it is about using new technologies so that citizens have a more active role in the control and treatment of your health / illness. This "empowerment" of citizens to manage their own health translates into the promotion of healthy lifestyles, preventive care and proactive interventions.

   "It is cheaper to prevent than to cure, maintaining health or avoiding complications in the case of chronic illness, but it is necessary for the user to be sure that, in his own home, he will be as controlled and cared for as if he were in a hospital environment ", said the professor at the School of Engineering of the University of Seville, Laura María Roa.

This group of experts has developed different intelligent sensors for the measurement of physical activity, metabolic expenditure or body composition, among others, and also an intelligent sensor to detect falls in elderly people that automatically sends an alarm message to socio-health services and It also confirms its attendance to the user.

"This is a small patch that is placed on the back at the height of the sacrum, which puts the user and healthcare personnel in contact in case of falls", explained Roa, and added that these are modular designs that allow modify certain parameters to adapt to different situations without the need to redesign the entire system. "This lowers the costs of production with the aim that it can be incorporated in the future to the public health system and be accessible to all citizens," he said.

Big data

The technological challenges involved in the development of 'e-health' systems also require the management of large volumes of patient data, from distributed information and from different sources that need the investigation of 'big data' methods and techniques. , that allow their integration for the generation of medical knowledge, development of clinical decision support systems, as well as the use of communication techniques in real time.

All this makes possible that the solutions in the field of 'e-health' are aligned with the new paradigms that arise in the field of health care, such as personalized medicine, preventive versus reactive medicine and evidence-based medicine . "The goal is to be able to access the patient's clinical record from anywhere and at any time to be able to take all this information into account when making a diagnosis, prescribing a treatment and carrying out an intervention, for example," Roa explained.

Therefore, "it is important" that the new systems of 'e-health' are integrated at all levels of the health field, where the ultimate goal is "to achieve a future distributed and ubiquitous model of care for the health and well-being of the citizenship through the use of ICT ", he concluded.