Sensors to Manage Chronic Complications

Dear Colleagues,

The dramatic increase in chronic conditions, including non-communicable disease (NCD), such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, and mental illness, across the globe has demanded immediate and creative actions to provide solutions for a plethora of unmet needs. Currently, more individuals are dying of chronic NCD than of acute diseases associated with disasters, trauma, or infection. Moreover, our population continues to age and live longer. More than 10,000 Americans reach Medicare age every day, some of whom will develop multiple chronic conditions and account for a large share of Medicare spending. All of these factors continue to overwhelm unchanging healthcare delivery systems. In response, many healthcare providers are re-engineering their pathways of care for patients with chronic disease to promote alternatives to repeated hospitalizations. Because management of chronic conditions requires lifestyle and daily behavior change, a greater emphasis must be placed on the patient’s central role and responsibility in healthcare. Focusing on the patient in this way constitutes an important shift in current clinical practice. At present, systems relegate the patient to the role of passive recipient of care, missing the opportunity to leverage what he or she can do to promote personal health. Healthcare for chronic conditions must be re-oriented around the patient and caregivers.  This Special Issue is focused on new developments in the area of sensors and sensor-based algorithm design that could facilitate management of chronic conditions including enabling doctors to provide personalized care, empowering patients to be engaged in taking care of their own health, and helping home caregivers and care providers to keep the elderly in their homes rather than moving them to assisted-living centers. Some of examples of these sensors/algorithms could be new sensors to monitor cognitive impairment and dementia,  sensors to reduce risk of readmission risk and care post hospital discharge, sensors to monitor frailty, sensors to improvement care management for those suffering from dementia,  sensors to improve patient adherence, sensors to better monitor sleep and stress, sensors for remote monitoring health and wellbeing, sensors to monitor and manage pain, sensors to manage diabetic foot complications, sensors to improve quality of life of cancer survivors/stroke survivors, sensors to manage environmental conditions that may impact health and wellbeing such as humidity, temperature, light, CO₂, etc.

Prof. Dr. Bijan Najafi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.