Personalized Health Systems for Cardiovascular Disease

Personalized Health Systems for Cardiovascular Disease is intended for researchers, developers, and designers in the field of p-health, with a specific focus on management of cardiovascular diseases. Biomedical engineers will benefit from coverage of sensors, data transmission, signal processing, data analysis, home and mobile applications, standards, and all other subject matters developed in this book in order to provide an integrated view of the different and multidisciplinary problems related to p-health systems. However, many chapters will also be interesting to physicians and other professionals who operate in the health domain. Students, MS and PhD level, mainly in technical universities, but also in medical schools, will find in this book a complete view of the manifold aspects of p-health, including technical problems related to sensors and software, to automatic evaluation and correct interpretation of the data, and also some legal and regulatory aspects. This book mainly focuses on the development of technology used by people and patients in the management of their own health.

New wearable and implantable devices allow a continuous monitoring of chronic patients, with a direct involvement of clinical centers and physicians. Also, healthy people are more and more interested in keeping their own wellness under control, by adopting healthy lifestyles and identifying any early sign of risk. This is leading to personalized solutions via systems which are tailored to a specific patient/person and her/ his needs. However, many problems are still open when it comes to p-health systems. Which sensors and parameters should be used? Which software and analysis? When and how? How do you design an effective management plan for chronic pathologies such as cardiovascular diseases? What is useful feedback for the patient or for the clinician? And finally, what are the limits of this approach? What is the view of physicians? The purpose of this book is to provide, from a technical point of view, a complete description of most of the elements which are part of such systems, including the sensors and the hardware, the signal processing and data management procedures, the classification and stratification models, the standards and the regulations, focusing on the state of the art and identifying the new directions for innovative solutions. In this book, readers will find the fundamental elements that must be taken into account when developing devices and systems in the field of p-health.

Anna Maria Bianchi is a Full Professor in Biomedical Engineering, with teaching responsibility in Biomedical Signal Processing and Medical Informatics, in BS, MS, and PhD Bioengineering programs. Her research interests are mainly related to the processing of biomedical signals and images and to the development of innovative methodologies for feature extraction, information enhancement, and model development. Applications are both in physiological studies and in clinics through design of interpretative and diagnostic models. In recent years, applications have been in the field of medical informatics and artificial intelligence. Prof. Bianchi is the scientific coordinator of the Medical Informatics Lab at DEIB and is a member of the management committee of two interdepartmental labs at Politecnico di Milano (i.e., the BrainLab@Polimi and PHEEL). She has authored 20 book chapters and more than 110 peer-reviewed papers in ISI international journals. She has been a fellow of EAMBES (European Alliance for Medical and Biological Engineering and Science) since 2012. Dr. Bianchi serves as a scientific expert in the EMBS Technical Committee on Neuroengineering and the Technical Committee on Cardiopulmonary Systems. She is Associate Editor of 'IEEE Transactions on Neural System and Rehabilitation Engineering' and a member of the editorial board of the 'Journal of Biomedical Signals Processing and Control' and of 'Electronics―Open Access Journal'. She has participated in many EU-funded (from VI framework program to H2020) and Italian-funded research projects with scientific responsibility and has active collaborations with companies operating in the field of biomedical instrumentation and systems.

Jorge Henriques is an Associate Professor, with teaching responsibility in Informatics Engineering and Biomedical Engineering in BS, MS, and PhD programs. His main research interests are computational intelligence methodologies with application to modeling, prediction, diagnosis, and decision making, in particular in the clinical context. He has been particularly active in the development of innovative solutions in p-health scenarios, with particular application to situations in preventive medicine and chronic diseases management, namely in the research and implementation of advanced algorithms for biosignals' analysis and processing (in particular, electrocardiogram, photoplethysmogram, heart sounds, and blood pressure). He is a senior researcher in the Adaptive Computation Group at the Center for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC). His publications include seven book chapters and over 200 papers in refereed international journals and conferences. He is a reviewer for many biomedical engineering journals and has been involved in numerous program committees of major international conferences. He has coordinated and participated in several projects at national and international levels (European FP6, FP7, and H2020). He is a licensed professional engineer, was the executive coordinator of the Informatics Laboratory of Instituto Pedro Nunes, and has provided consulting services to various companies and national institutions in the clinical informatics and e-health areas.

Vicente Traver Salcedo has a bachelor’s degree (1998) and a PhD (2004) in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de València. He is a member of the academic board for the interuniversity master's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València. He is also the coordinator of the 'Healthy Living' cluster, which combines six different R&D university groups working in the field. Since 1998, his research focus has been on telemedicine, e-health, and e-inclusion, especially on the provision of home healthcare services through telematic media and the concepts of patient empowerment and the citizen as a health co-producer. He has participated in more than 50 EU-funded projects (from IV framework program to H2020) and Spanish-funded projects, and has taken part in multiple research agreements with companies in healthcare and social services that make use of information communication technologies. He has published more than 120 technical papers in national and international journals and has participated in several seminars and conferences as invited speaker. He is a member of international scientific congresses committees and a member of the editorial board of 'IET Networks'. He was the keynote lecturer at BIOSTEC 2010. He was the chairman and organizer of pHealth 2008 and the four editions of the International Workshop on Technology for Healthcare and Healthy Lifestyle (2008, 2010, 2011, 2012). He was conference co-chair of IEEE Biomedical Health Informatics 2014. He is cofounder of two SME IT health-related companies, currently employing more than 40 people. A full list of his publications is available at goo.gl/Wg2JZR.