In-home wearable system to detect early-stage decompensation in heart failure patients

Dr Yeonsik Noh, assistant professor in the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing and the College of Engineering, has received an R01 research grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to develop a novel device for in-home monitoring of heart failure patients who are at risk of decompensation.

In the United States, heart failure affects over 6 million people and is one of the most common causes of hospitalization. New technologies are needed to enable in-home monitoring to guide and treatment changes for patients at risk of developing acute decompensated heart failure. Consequently, the multidisciplinary team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, and the University of Connecticut plan to develop an innovative bioimpedance and electrocardiogram monitor with re-usable, non-wetted, and flexible bioimpedance electrodes embedded in a wearable vest, used in conjunction with a smartphone and cloud server that will continuously collect, transmit, and monitor key physiologic data in order to collect real-time date about cardiac risk factors for people with heart failure.