Lincoln researchers develop wearable monitor

Catching a cold or a change in health can be a huge concern for millions of Americans suffering from chronic diseases.Now, some University of Nebraska researchers believe they’ve developed a wearable device that can monitor health data to help predict and detect dangerous flare-ups and lead to earlier treatment.It’s thin, lightweight and can easily fit under your clothes.It’s a device that Eric Markvicka, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, believes could someday help the more than 12 million Americans living with diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD.)”A wearable electronic device that can monitor symptoms in real-time, we hope that we can then begin to detect early exacerbations on time scales of days to hours, providing improved treatment and management for these patients,” Markvicka said.It’s kind of like an Apple watch on steroids that you adhere to your chest.It can stream back more than just heart rate, but respiratory and gait data and include weather and air quality.”We’re looking at the coupling between these different rhythms and understanding how the relationship between, for say, gait and respiration rhythm couple, and how that changes as these patients move from sort of a health to more severe disease state,” Markvicka said.It’s something that University of Nebraska Medical Center pulmonologist Dr. Stephen Rennard said could be critical for some COPD patients.”The key thing is to make an earlier diagnosis when an event is happening so that you can prevent the adverse outcomes,” Rennard said.COPD is the third leading cause of death in the U.S.Rennard said currently, the only way to get some of that information is through daily logs and questionnaires over days and weeks.”And even if it’s really short, only taking a minute or two, it’s really hard for real people to do that every day consistently,” Rennard said. “It always results in incomplete collection, and therefore sort of incomplete usefulness,” Rennard said.The research is funded by a four-year $1.2 million grant from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. The next step will be to have people try it out and ultimately, a clinical study involving people with COPD through UNMC.”Our approach is to develop really a fit-for-purpose device that will collect information that can then be processed with appropriate analytics to provide crucial diagnostic information,” Rennard said. Markvicka believes the device could also provide real-time monitoring for other diseases.It could also help athletes maximize performance, the military and first responders.”Firefighters that may be in a burning building and being able to monitor their symptoms and performance in real-time and being able to accurately determine when They may need to get out,” Markvicka said.”Widespread application, from athletes to recreational use to even daily use for normal Americans. I mean, the possibilities are endless,” Markvicka said.Markvicka believes when produced to scale, the monitor will cost about $50.”We do hope to see these in the market very soon after we’ve verified that they do work,” Markvicka said.Click here for the latest headlines from KETV NewsWatch 7

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