Description
Coronary artery disease (CAD) is caused by an accumulation of plaques within the walls of the arteries that supply the myocardium with oxygen and nutrients. After decades of progression, some of these plaques may rupture and along with the activation of the blood clotting system limit blood flow to the myocardium, resulting in an acute coronary syndrome (ACS). This may be either a heart attack (myocardial infarction) meaning that muscle cell necrosis in the affected regions of the myocardium has occurred) or unstable angina (meaning that the patient has persistent or recurrent chest pain at rest but without evidence of myocardial necrosis).
Risk factors comprise age, sex, family history but also lifestyle-related aspects such as smoking habits, physical inactivity, overweight/obesity etc. Despite the advantages, utilization of cardiac rehabilitation phase III remains low. Recent research is supportive of the beneficial effects of cardiac rehabilitation in patients with heart failure as well as in older patients. Unfortunately, cardiac rehabilitation continues to be considerably underutilized with poor referral and enrollment rates. Implementing quality performance measures, automated referral systems, and the option of home-based cardiac rehabilitation for some patients may all help to increase participation. In addition, innovative exercise training regimens may help to enhance the beneficial effects of cardiac rehabilitation.
HEARTWAYS is a European Project that has the objective to develop an advanced modular solution for supporting cardiac patients in rehabilitation outside a medicalized centre with the aid of wearable sensors and intelligent algorithms that personalize the management and the follow-up for patients and professionals.
The proposed solution is structured in three different layers. The first one, the monitoring layer, is composed of a combination of smart and wearable sensors, specialized in the monitoring of the vital signs needed for the diagnosis of targeted patients; the second level implements a multiparametric analysis and processing layer that augments the information provided by the standalone monitoring modules and allows a multiparametric assessment of the patient’s status, evolution, performance and predicted CV risk. The last layer is devoted to improve the way patients are managed by healthcare professionals and to create those mechanisms that enable the personalized support to the patient. On the first case, the focus is on enabling a simpler control of patients without reducing the quality of care, increasing the possibilities of handling more patients at the same time and allowing a better adjustment of the available resources to the concrete needs of the individual patients. On the second case, the aim is in increasing the capabilities of the solution to combine the medical needs with the patient’s preferences as well as incorporating a comprehensive motivation and psychological support strategy that complements and reinforces the treatment guidelines.
The consortium of the HeartWays project is made of a combination of innovative technology SMEs, working in the ICT for health domain, with complementary expertise and complementary business and research interests; and excellent RTD centres that bring into the consortium a high level of innovation with the aim to support the SMEs in the extension of their current products beyond the state of the art and to new markets and service scenarios. The project partners come from four different European countries, Spain, Italy, Croatia and Portugal, and have complementary expertise.
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme managed by REA-Research Executive Agency (FP7-SME-2012, Research for SMEs) under grant agreement nº 315659.
www.heartways.eu
Documents
Ficha Salupedia | Inglés
Folleto de descripción en inglés del proyecto HeartWays.
Autor
Tecnologías para la Salud y el Bienestar.
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