A wearable vest system is designed to monitor heart failure patients in their home and detect when their condition is worsening. Such early detection of acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) could lead to treatment changes and other interventions that prevent hospitalizations.

Yeonsik Noh, assistant professor who holds a joint appointment in the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing and the College of Engineering’s electrical and computer engineering department, was awarded a projected four-year, $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute to advance, refine, and test the technology.

Bioimpedance measures how the body impedes electric current flow. The new system expands, refines, and improves an earlier version of the wearable vest. The new system has a cloud-based database system so that once they measure the patient’s impedance and heart signal, the data is automatically loaded to the cloud so the researchers can get access to it and see what’s happening.

The vest only needs to be worn for five minutes a day. It will be equipped with silicone-based electrodes designed by the researchers and an air tube to improve contact with the skin.

Article source: Medical Design&Briefs