Workshop 1 – Ultrasound dedicated to medical applications

Date & venue

This workshop will take place at the Grand Hôtel Suisse Majestic in Montreux, (Switzerland) on Wednesday 30th March 2011 from 13:30 to 17:30 .

Registration

Participation in the workshop is free, (advanced) registration is mandatory. For participation and information, please send email to cyril.lafon@inserm.fr or catherine.dehollain@epfl.ch. 

Organizers

Summary

This workshop is devoted to the ULTRAsponder project. The presentations are focused on remote powering and communications through ultrasound, on low power data acquisition and low power digital processing as well as on the use on ultrasound for the monitoring of the heart as well as medical treatments.  

The FP7 ICT European Project ULTRAsponder aims at developing a new system with a high degree of reliability and accuracy of the clinical data, while providing the patients with high level of safety and user friendliness. Though the project intends to propose a general solution to several possible pathologies, such as acute diabetes, epilepsy and other debilitating neurological disorders, it focuses its efforts on one demonstrator devoted to chronic cardiac diseases. For this specific application, continuous monitoring is particularly important to follow the day and night heart activity, thus allowing to understand how the heart reacts to different kinds of stresses, to different kinds of activities and to different sorts of medications. A continuous monitoring of a patient can also give the physicians the possibility to make a direct comparison of the actual patient condition with a past condition (one day, one week or one month earlier). Therefore continuous monitoring is a major leap forward in the diagnosis and the treatment of cardiac congestive heart failure (CHF).

ULTRAsponder aims at developing an innovative technology based on ultrasonic telemetry techniques, for communication between one sensor deeply implanted in the human body (the transponder) and a control unit which is used for both wirelessly recharging the implanted device and transmitting the received information to the external world.

Program

Download the program here.

Workshop 2 – Visions towards ICT-supported health

Date & venue

This workshop will take place at the Grand Hôtel Suisse Majestic in Montreux, (Switzerland) on Wednesday 30th March 2011 from 13:30 to 17:30 and Thursday 31st march 2011 from 9:00 to 12:00 .

Registration

Participation in the workshop is free, (advanced) registration is mandatory. For participation and information, please send email to a.c.deridder@tudelft.nl.

Organizers

Summary

The state of the art of ICT technology, including sensor and actuator technology, is rapidly moving towards the stage where we can envisage new ways to significantly improve health care, and curb its rising costs. More importantly, avoiding health problems by pro-actively and unobtrusively coaching people to adopt health-improving lifestyles.

The development of new low-cost and dependable sensing devices, the incorporation of a multitude of different sensors in consumer devices such as smart phones, the actuation capabilities of these devices, body area networks and personal networks, etc. have created the basic building blocks for future personal healthcare. Many of these developments are the result of collaborative research projects, sometimes large-scale, which are about to yield economically feasible solutions.

The purpose of this workshop is to get a clear view of: (a) where we stand today, (b) which promising developments are on the horizon, and (c) bottlenecks and open issues. Finally the aim is to draft a road map for the different stakeholders to lead us to important ICT-driven improvements in personal healthcare.

In order to achieve this we intend to bring together experts to shed light and debate the different dimensions of ICT-driven personal health care. These are: ICT research in personal healthcare, societal aspects and economic issues in healthcare, the role of SMEs and start-ups emerging from research domains and, health care providers. Some emerging technologies that are important in this domain are body area networks and personal networks for health. In particular the aspects dependability, energy requirements, security and privacy and ease of use for the users, the stakeholders and the application developers will be considered.

The workshop will host presentations by experts drawn from all related dimensions providing ample opportunity for discussion, and followed by a panel discussion leading towards a future road map. 

Program

The workshop will be divided in two days:

• Part 1 – Wednesday March 30, 2011 from 14:00 to 18:00
  Presentations focusing on state of the art technology, developments and business in this area, panel discussions, discussion on a roadmap for further developments. This part of the workshop is open to all who are interested

• Part 2 – Thursday March 31, 2011, from 09:00 to 13:00
  Extended with Hermes Partnership member meeting from 14:00 to 15:30.
  Presentations and discussions on the practical implementation of the drafted roadmap, drafting contours of future projects, discussions on further actions to taken. This part of the workshop is open to invited quests and Hermes Partners. The Thursday morning meeting of the workshop will be followed by a Hermes Partnership member meeting (disclosed to Hermes Partners) .