Personalized Care Devices

Cloud-based and cognitive computing are now making it practical to collect and use information about the patient at the individual level. The convergence of wearable sensors and cloud computing are enabling the collection of massive data sets that provide users of that data insight into the sociological, psychological, and physiological aspects of health and disease.

This information is being readily gathered by some consumers, data capture companies, and increasingly by employers. The potential for use of this information in healthcare has emerged recently, but the explosion of this information is well underway. At the very least, wearable technology will inform us about design and logistical nuances of technology that emits a continuous stream of personal data to the cloud. It is likely many of these data streams will be useful to decision makers in the healthcare industry, not just the patient or the physician.

Many sensors currently being used routinely in healthcare can be deployed as a wearable and collect and transmit real-time wave-form data using electrical, optical, acoustic, and even chemical signals. These innovations are allowing providers, payers, and patients to accumulate new biomarkers for disease and health and to be much more informed about the effectiveness of interventions in real time. A collective hope is that researchers will no longer need to wait months or even years to get data on the success of a clinical trial. The promise is that physicians will be able to see if drugs or other interventions are working, in real time.

Personalized Care Devices

UA physician and biomaterial expert Dr. Marvin J. Slepian is part of a team that has developed biodegradable electronics that could revolutionize medicine, environmental monitoring and consumer electronics.

iCAMP-A is an interdisciplinary research & development collaboration between a host of productive, exciting, creative teams-- from Podiatric & Vascular Surgery, Orthopedics, Nursing, Geriatrics, Anthropology and Engineering at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine, Department of Surgery, Division of Vascular Surgery. iCAMP brings together a core team of clinicians, research sci

Esther Sternberg, MD, and her research team at AzCIM are working on ways to analyze health by looking at molecules in sweat.

Someday in the not-too-distant future, sweat-monitoring devices might be able to tell how healthy a person is, thanks in part to groundbreaking work under way at the University of Arizona.