The world is directly connected via cellular networks and Wi-Fi, and will be integrated with radar technology in the coming 6G. The integrated radar and communication technologies can not only estimate human vital signs and limb activities, but also enable remote health monitoring that is essential for the timely and optimal disease management. This project is bridging the advanced wireless technologies and radio signal processing with biomedical signal analytics and health monitoring to maximize the effectiveness of personalized healthcare. The project will be coordinated by University of Twente and UMC Utrecht will be one of the beneficiaries. The project will support 11 individual research projects for doctoral students in the established European Doctoral Network for Resilient Remote Healthcare using Intelligent Sensing and Communication Technologies, called SMARTTEST.
The healthcare systems in the EU and around the world rely primarily on individual’s abilities to self-monitoring to identify symptoms and to initiate the intervention by healthcare professionals . The current healthcare system is reactive but not preventive to disease management and is burdensome to vulnerable individuals. This leads to high healthcare costs, lowered quality of living, and in some cases higher morbidity and mortality. The rapidly developing integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technologies, a feature of 6G, provide an awesome opportunity for enabling remote health monitoring in a contact-free thus continuous manner.
The SMARTTEST project brings together world leading experts from Enschede, Leuven, Milano, Roma, Utrecht, Ostrava and Padova to create a Doctoral Network with the goal of training a future generation of engineers that are capable of bridging advanced wireless technologies and radio signal processing, biomedical signal analytics and health monitoring to maximize the effectiveness of personalized healthcare. These inter-disciplinary engineers will develop a holistic view on the design and development of integrated sensing and communication devices as well as algorithms for contact-free, continuous and proactive remote health monitoring, with profound knowledge on biomedical domain and social practices.
SMARTTEST coordinator Dr. Yang Miao (University of Twente) said: “My vision for @DN-SMARTTEST is to train a future generation of talents that have multidisciplinary skillset connecting Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Science, connecting advanced radio communication and radar technologies to the health monitoring in home and clinical settings, eventually benefiting the personalized healthcare.”
The goal of the research program is to develop and validate the first ISAC enabled proactive/preventive and contact-free remote health monitoring system by integrating human sensing, vital function monitoring and health status assessment into wireless communication networks to overarch the following scientific and societal challenges:
The objectives are that hardware will be integrated so that simultaneous communication and sensing are possible using one set of devices; the model-driven approach based on electromagnetics and estimation theory as well as data-driven learning (AI) based approach will be developed to process the radio signals captured from the ISAC system and to estimate human form, macro-/micro-motion parameters; tools for autonomous diagnosis of health status will be developed and validated, to turn human info to health status for early detection of complications, after-surgery recovery, and understanding links between lifestyle and chronic disease; and electromagnetic exposure and sustainability aspects of the system will be modelled in order to assess the possibility of continuous use for monitoring this in close collaboration with industry via secondments, network wide events, demonstrators and applications, and thus actually contribute to the Horizon Europe ambition.
SMARTTEST is funded by Horizon Europe (HORIZON) through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Training & Mobility Actions (TMA) in the form of a Doctoral Network (DN) which will host 11 doctoral candidates across Europe and beyond. The inter/multi-disciplinary characteristics is guaranteed by the presence of six academic beneficiaries (University of Twente, KU Leuven, Politecnico di Milano, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (National Research Council of Italy), University Medical Center Utrecht, Technical University of Ostrava) and one industrial beneficiary (Adant Technologies Inc.) These beneficiaries are located in four European countries (the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Italy) which possess top class expertise in radio/biomedical systems and signal processing, signal/clinical data analytics and practices, and applications using AI. SMARTTEST is also a collaboration between the Radio Systems (RS) and the Biomedical Signals and Systems (BSS) groups at University of Twente’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS). The supervisors are Coordinator Dr. Yang Miao and Prof. Andre Kokkeler from the Radio Systems (RS) group. In the UMC Utrecht the project will be managed by Prof. Wolfgang Buhre, Kim van Loon, Martijn Slieker and Martine Breteler. Keep updated about the project and the upcoming recruitment for the eleven doctoral candidate positions and visit www.DN-SMARTTEST.eu
