The Wearable Technology Revolution and Its Impact in the Medical Field

The Wearable Technology Revolution and Its Impact in the Medical Field

Dr Paolo Bonato, Ph.D.
Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation,
Harvard Medical School

Time: 16 July 2013, 18:00 AEDT (Refreshments from 17:30)

Venue: Engineering House, 21 Bedford St, North Melbourne, VIC 3051

Abstract

The concept of monitoring individuals in the home and community settings was first proposed more than 50 years ago, when Holter monitoring was invented (in the late 1940’s) and later adopted (in the 1960’s) as a clinical tool. However, technologies to fully enable such vision were lacking and only sporadic and rather obtrusive monitoring techniques were available for several decades. Over the past ten years, we have witnessed tremendous progress in the field of wearable technology. Advances in this field have made available the tools needed to implement and deploy technology with the characteristics required to achieve effective home monitoring of patients’ health status. These technologies provide the tools to achieve early diagnosis of conditions such as cardiac arrhythmias, prevention of chronic conditions such as diabetes, improved clinical management of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, and the ability to promptly respond to emergency situations such as seizures in patients with epilepsy and cardiac arrest in subjects undergoing cardiovascular monitoring. Current research efforts are focused on the development of systems enabling clinical applications. The current focus on developing and deploying wearable systems targeting specific clinical applications has the potential for leading to clinical adoption within the next five to ten years.

In this talk, we will focus on recent developments that appear to enable new applications of wearable technology in the context of the clinical management of chronic conditions.

Biography

Paolo Bonato, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Motion Analysis Laboratory at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston MA. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, a member of the Affiliated Faculty of the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge MA, an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston MA, and an Associate Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Boston MA. Dr. Bonato is Founding and Current Editor-in-Chief of Journal on NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, of the IEEE Journal on Biomedical and Health Informatics, and of the IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine. Dr. Bonato served as an Elected Member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) AdCom (2007-2010) and he was recently elected IEEE EMBS Vice-President for Publications(2013-2014). He served as President of the International Society of Electrophysiology and Kinesiology (2008-2010). He also served as Chair of the 33rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2011) and as Chair of the IEEE EMBS Technical Committee on Wearable Biomedical Sensors and Systems in 2008, a committee of which he has been a member since its inception in 2006.

He received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy in 1989 and the Ph.D. degree in biomedical engineering from Universita` di Roma “La Sapienza” in 1995. His research interest is focused on rehabilitation technology with special emphasis on wearable technology and robotics. To learn more about Dr. Bonato’s work, visit srhmal.net.