Cloud System Integration in an Android App for eHealth in Anesthesia Practices

**** Master Project ****

 

Contact: Dr. MER Sandro Carrara, Senior Scientist, EPFL-IC-IINFCOM-LSI
                Mr. Pierre-Mikael Legris, Pryv Co-Founder, EPFL Innovation Park – D
                Ms. Francesca Stradolini, PhD Student, EPFL-IC-IINFCOM-LSI
 

 

Introduction
Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) is crucial for critical medications and drug administration, like in anesthesia practices or in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). The aim is to determine the drug dosage by maintaining the plasma or blood concentration in a targeted therapeutic range to optimize the efficacy of the treatment. In case of intravenous anesthesia an accurate balanced delivery of several compounds, including anesthetics, analgesics and muscle relaxants is required to achieve an appro- priate sedation and to avoid intoxication or awareness during the surgery. The effect of anesthesia on a patient is expressed as the Depth of Anesthesia (DOA), which is a very challenging parameter to estimate. Electrochemical biosensors offer a suitable method for the real-time monitoring in blood. Moreover, thanks to the great improvements in the capabilities of mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones, it becomes common interest to develop applications that can facilitate the way to read and monitor data from sensors. The wireless connection allows an immediate display of the measured values, so that the doctor is allowed to promptly react in an emergency case or to adjust the infusion of the anesthetic compounds. Moreover, the possibility to perform remote consulting and data exchange between doctors and specialists enables better medical intervention in a shorter period of time.

Figure 1 – Pryv solution

The Master Project
Starting from an existing Android app [1] able to receive data from a HW sensor and to send them to a cloud system, the student will extend the existing app with the following features:

  • Design and generate a sensor-specific Pryv data structure [2] (see Figure 2) using the Pryv Android library [3];
  • Visualization tool to plot electrochemical techniques such as ChronoAmperometry [4] and Cyclic Voltammetry [5];
  • Adapt Bluetooth communication protocol, enabling the communication with various bio- sensing devices in collaboration with the Hardware team;
  • Port Bluetooth remote sensor control to the current app;
  • Implement user roles and permissions management feature for various actors of the clinical ecosystem;
  • Connect smart-watch to Android app for push notifications.


Figure 2. Example of Pryv data structure

The communication between the hardware bio-sensing platform and the mobile device exploits the Bluetooth technology. Thanks to this wireless connection, the sensor platform continuously monitors different anesthetic compounds and sends the measured values to the Android application that receives and stores data on the cloud system meanwhile it also displays them on different graphs as a hospital monitor. Moreover the application has to allow the user to set some parameters of the hardware circuit. All the set-up information as well as the measured data has to be collected in the cloud. The implementation of a database for managing the users that can have access to the cloud will be also considered to define different roles and permissions.

Requirements

  • Android programming;
  • Bluetooth communication;
  • Interest in electrical measurements with lab equipment.

References
[1] Francesca Stradolini, Stefano Riario, Cristina Boero, Camilla Baj-Rossi, Irene Taurino, Grégoire Surrel, Giovanni De Micheli, and Sandro Carrara. Wireless monitoring of endogenous and exogenous biomolecules on an android interface. IEEE Sensors Journal, 16(9):3163–3170, 2015.
[2] Pryv API concepts
[3] Pryv android library.
[4] Chrono amperometry.
[5] Cyclic voltammetry.