CETA Students Work on Digital Health Project

ES 242, Engineering by Design, is a project-based course taken by sophomore engineering majors in which they study the design process, including “problem solving methodologies, evaluation of alternative solutions, economic analysis, ethical constraints, group dynamics, and presentation techniques.” Each section of the course addresses a difference project, for example, clean energy or digital health. The students in Dr. Patricia Mellodge’s section of the course have taken up the challenge of the Digital Health Initiative (DHI).

DHI involves faculty, staff and students from all disciplines in CETA, chemistry and biology in the College of Arts & Sciences, and the health professions in the College of Education, Nursing and Health professions. These groups come together to work on telehealth solutions to health issues faced by people in the real world. Healthcare technologies is one of the fastest growing segments of the American economy, especially as the baby boom generation grows older. It has become critical to develop monitoring technology and deliver cost effective healthcare to an aging population so they can remain in their homes or assisted living residences and not have to move to higher-cost acute and sub-acute care facilities.

The students in Mellodge’s class decided to build a system to monitor the movements of an elderly person in the home environment. After hearing from Dean Manzione here in CETA and Dr. Kevin Ball of Physical Therapy, the students began to work on a system of sensors to be worn on the person’s shoe, attached to the person’s walker or cane, and placed in rooms to detect general motion. Signals from the sensors are collected by a computer, saved, displayed in a waveform graphic, and analyzed by healthcare professionals to determine, not simply the person’s movements, but the manner and strength of those movements, not just whether the person is moving around, but how the person is moving. Is he favoring one leg? Is she relying on the cane or walker more? Is he moving from room to room or staying in one location? Even mental health can be evaluated through an analysis of patterns and habits of movement.

The students were able to demonstrate that their project will work by wirelessly collecting data from sensors in a walker and displaying it on a computer screen. Future plans for the project include fully implementing a multiple-sensor system in a real-world setting that a healthcare professional will be able to use.

To read a complete description of the project and see a video of the walker in use while data from sensors in it is displayed, please click here.