Digital technologies improve remote rehabilitation, medical monitoring for patients

ICT2013 will bring the leading technology groups and centres in Europe together with digital companies and experts to set the path of European ICT research policy.

Improving the quality of life of specific groups of patients and people with special needs is the shared goal of the projects BACKHOME, REWIRE and SYNERGY-COPD. With Barcelona Digital Technology Centre's (BDigital) participation in one project and leadership of the other two, three ICT tools in the prototype stage have been developed for all three projects aimed at the health care and hospital market that help to improve medical and health care monitoring for each patient target group. The prototypes will be shown for the first time and may be tested during the ICT2013 Fair, which will be held from 6 to 8 November in Vilnius (Lithuania). Organised by the European Commission, it will bring together more than 4,000 industry researchers, entrepreneurs and representatives to know and discuss about new European ICT research policies and the most recent groundbreaking research.

BDigital will be at the ICT2013 Fair with some of its different European projects, as examples of applied research highly oriented toward creating software products that provide effective solutions and that cover market needs while adhering to the aims of the European Commission at the same time. Specifically, these kinds of ICT platforms bring substantial improvements to the hospital and health care sector by tending to chronic conditions, helping to optimise costs while offering patients quality service and monitoring and a better quality of life.

The projects

The platform developed for BackHome (led by BDigital) is designed to help to provide greater physical and social autonomy to people with severe disability, who will be able to control their surroundings at home with home automation sensors (like turning the light on and off, for example) and interact and communicate with friends and family through standard social networks and email. Moreover, a home telemonitoring system will be developed as part of the project to monitor the activities scheduled for the patient's recovery, such as stimulation exercises and cognitive rehabilitation through creative activities (plastic, music, etc.) or exercises to improve memory and concentration through Brain-Computer Interfaces (BNCIs).

Rehabilitation is also the focus of the project REWIRE, which has developed an innovative virtual reality-based rehabilitation platform that will help patients discharged from the hospital (after suffering a stroke, for example) to continue with motor rehabilitation at home under the hospital's remote supervision.

The project Synergy-COPD (also led by BDigital, with Hospital Clínic in Barcelona as a prominent partner) has created an ICT tool that will assist study of the behaviour of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and will help doctors and pharmacists to make decisions about patients with the disease. Specifically, the tool allows doctors and pharmacists to enter patient data and cross-reference them with medical information such as previous cases, provide a disease prognosis and especially help to determine the treatment that will give the best result.