Body Worn Sensors and Related Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Various aspects of the economic burden of many healthcare systems in both developed and developing countries are associated with an aging population, in which 70% will need some kind of long-term care. This, of course, is exacerbated by the fact that our population continues to age and live longer. For instance, it is estimated that in the USA alone, 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. Management of chronic diseases requires patient behavior change, and thus, a greater emphasis must be placed on the patient’s central and active role. This constitutes an important shift in current clinical practice. At present, systems relegate the patient to the role of a passive recipient of care, thereby missing the opportunity to leverage what they can do to promote personal health. Healthcare for chronic conditions must be reoriented around the patient and caregivers. In addition, more emphasis should be allocated to self-managed prevention at individual level.

The widespread uptake and acceptance of technology represents an opportunity to address this rising challenge. In particular, thanks to advances in wearables and digital health technologies, this is an opportunity to empower patients and/or their caregivers to be engaged as a part of the healthcare ecosystem. However, there are still fundamental gaps in adopting such technologies for the management of chronic illness and preventive care. For instance, while advanced signal processing, artificial intelligence, and remote monitoring have transformed the landscape of digital health industries, it is still unclear what clinically meaningful information could be extracted from these technologies to enable healthcare professionals to provide personalized care, empower patients to take care of their own health, and assist caregivers in effectively coordinating care.

This Special Issue is focused on applications of wearables, digital health, and data analytics to facilitate management of chronic conditions or preventive care. Some examples of these applications could be new studies that utilize sensors to extract digital biomarkers associated with cognitive decline, motor capacity deterioration because of specific conditions (e.g., dementia, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes), technologies to improvement care management for those suffering from chronic condition (e.g., chronic pain), sensors to improve patient adherence, sensors to better monitor sleep and stress, sensors for remote monitoring health and wellbeing, and sensors to manage environmental conditions that may impact health and wellbeing, such as humidity, temperature, light, CO2, etc. Of interest are also advanced data analytics developed to extract meaningful information from raw sensor data, to fuse multimodal data, to quantify interaction between physiological system (e.g., cardiorespiratory and motor system, emotion/cognition and motor system), and to quantify and visualize the pattern of individuals’ behavior in the context of everyday life.

Prof. Bijan Najafi
Dr. Anisoara Paraschiv-Ionescu
Dr. Hossein Rouhani
Guest Editors

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