Sign up for our newsletter!    Become a member!
Home Events Officers Links Jobs Search Contact

Invited Talk

Wearable and Ambient Solutions for Medical Application

Dr. Bert Arnrich
Senior Researcher
Electronics Laboratory
ETH Zurich

Abstract

Before the 20th century, medical care was delivered at home, through visits from mobile family physicians who packed the necessary medical technology into a doctor's bag. In the 20th century rare and expensive resources, such as heavy technology and specialist providers, had to be centralized in hospitals to make their utilization effective. Nowadays, the aging of the population exerts pressure on the healthcare systems in various ways: increasing of chronic diseases and co-morbidity, problems of compliance to medication and lifestyle guidance among the elderly, and the need for long-term care and assistance of elderly people. Driven by quality and cost issues, the healthcare systems have to change radically in the near future from current healthcare professional-centric systems to distributed networked healthcare systems in which the individual becomes an active partner in the care process. In this transformation, wearable and ambient technologies will pave the way for a pervasive, user-centred and preventive healthcare model.

Biography

Bert Arnrich is a senior researcher at the Wearable Computing Laboratory of ETH Zurich, Switzerland. With a diploma (MSc) in natural science informatics of the University of Bielefeld, Germany (2001) and a PhD in engineering sciences (2006), Dr. Arnrich is currently engaged in personal health systems in the framework of national and European research projects. While conducting his doctoral studies, his research focused on medical data-mining, machine learning and statistical modelling in close cooperation with a heart institute. He developed a data mart system designed to identify patterns of heart disease, patients’ response to treatment and real-time risk stratification. Since 2006 his research on pervasive computing technologies is directed towards paving the way for a pervasive, user-centred and preventive healthcare model.

Volker Koch, 03/2010