HeartCycle Project Sets Out to Create Innovative Telemonitoring Solutions

Clothes, bed sheets and home appliances could soon help heart patients to better deal with their condition. The new EU-funded HeartCycle project sets out to create innovative telemonitoring solutions. Launched on 1 March, it is one of the largest biomedical and healthcare research projects in the EU.

The system that the industry-led research consortium is planning to develop will improve the quality of care for coronary heart disease and heart failure patients by monitoring their condition at home, using unobtrusive sensors built into everyday objects. At the same time, the system is intended to report automatically to clinicians, so that they can adapt therapies and make lifestyle recommendations, as well as involve the patients themselves in the management of their disease. The latter is a great challenge as well as a great opportunity, according to Professor John Cleland, head of the Department of Cardiology at the University of Hull, UK. "Investing directly in people who need help, and not just in services that do things to or for them, makes sense in terms of improved care, greater affordability and the effective deployment of scarce nursing and medical resources," he says.

"By developing systems that remotely monitor heart patients and motivate them to adhere to treatment regimes and adopt beneficial lifestyles, we hope to improve the survival of people with heart disease as well as contain the overall cost of care," explains Henk van Houten, senior vice president of Phillips Research and head of the Healthcare Research programme.

"The development of such systems can only be achieved efficiently via multi-disciplinary partnerships between hardware engineers, software engineers, textile manufacturers, industrial designers, clinical experts and healthcare providers, as is the case in the HeartCycle project," Mr van Houten adds.

The public and private 18 project partners from Germany, Greece, Finland, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Switzerland and China come from numerous different backgrounds in research, academia, medicine and industry. Over a period of four years, the EU will invest more than €14 million in the HeartCycle research under its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The total project cost amounts to nearly €22 million.

HeartCycle builds on the progress made by the MyHeart project, which will end in December 2008 and received funding under the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). MyHeart, bringing together some of the same actors, developed advanced telemonitoring technologies and service concepts to enable people to play an active role in maintaining their health. It was during this research that the project partners identified home-based disease management as a potential field for improving medical standards of care, an objective that HeartCycle is trying to achieve with a focus on coronary heart disease.

A total of 1.9 million deaths in the EU every year are the result of cardiovascular diseases, causing annual health costs of €105 billion. Half of those deaths occur in people who have previously had a heart attack, which is why the project partners consider "finding better ways to manage and treat coronary heart disease and chronic heart failure as one of the most effective ways of reducing the human cost and financial burden of these debilitating conditions."

For further information, please visit:
http://www.research.philips.com/

Related news articles:

Copyright ©European Communities, 2008
Neither the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, nor any person acting on its behalf, is responsible for the use, which might be made of the attached information. The attached information is drawn from the Community R&D Information Service (CORDIS). The CORDIS services are carried on the CORDIS Host in Luxembourg - http://cordis.europa.eu. Access to CORDIS is currently available free-of-charge.

Most Popular Now

Researchers Find Telemedicine may Help R…

Low-value care - medical tests and procedures that provide little to no benefit to patients - contributes to excess medical spending and both direct and cascading harms to patients. A...

AI Revolutionizes Glaucoma Care

Imagine walking into a supermarket, train station, or shopping mall and having your eyes screened for glaucoma within seconds - no appointment needed. With the AI-based Glaucoma Screening (AI-GS) network...

AI may Help Clinicians Personalize Treat…

Individuals with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a condition characterized by daily excessive worry lasting at least six months, have a high relapse rate even after receiving treatment. Artificial intelligence (AI)...

Accelerating NHS Digital Maturity: Paper…

Digitised clinical noting at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is creating efficiencies for busy doctors and nurses. The trust’s CCIO Dr Andrew Adair, deputy CCIO Dr John Greenaway, and...

Mobile App Tracking Blood Pressure Helps…

The AHOMKA platform, an innovative mobile app for patient-to-provider communication that developed through a collaboration between the School of Engineering and leading medical institutions in Ghana, has yielded positive results...

AI can Open Up Beds in the ICU

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals frequently ran short of beds in intensive care units. But even earlier, ICUs faced challenges in keeping beds available. With an aging...

Can AI Help Detect Cognitive Impairment?

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be an early indicator of Alzheimer's disease or dementia, so identifying those with cognitive issues early could lead to interventions and better outcomes. But diagnosing...

Customized Smartphone App Shows Promise …

A growing body of research indicates that older adults in assisted living facilities can delay or even prevent cognitive decline through interventions that combine multiple activities, such as improving diet...

New Study Shows Promise for Gamified mHe…

A new study published in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders highlights the potential of More Stamina, a gamified mobile health (mHealth) app designed to help people with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)...

AI Model Predicting Two-Year Risk of Com…

AFib (short for atrial fibrillation), a common heart rhythm disorder in adults, can have disastrous consequences including life-threatening blood clots and stroke if left undetected or untreated. A new study...

Patients' Affinity for AI Messages …

In a Duke Health-led survey, patients who were shown messages written either by artificial intelligence (AI) or human clinicians indicated a preference for responses drafted by AI over a human...

New Research Explores How AI can Build T…

In today’s economy, many workers have transitioned from manual labor toward knowledge work, a move driven primarily by technological advances, and workers in this domain face challenges around managing non-routine...