In-Body Sensing

              Title: Body Sensor Networks - Meeting the Challenges of Pervasive Healthcare

Author: Guang-Zhong Yang , Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London.

Abstract:

Shorter hospital stay and better community care is set to be the future trend of national health service. Providing specialist service at a local level, however, is difficult, considering the relative infrequency with which a particular disease, or a combination of diseases, may be encountered by the typical general practitioner. Such schemes must be underpinned by a strong and intelligent information link between patients and specialist centres, which monitors the status of the patient through non-invasive or implanted sensory devices, and provides early warnings of potential problems. With demographic changes associated with the aging population and the increasing number of people living alone, such information exchange is crucial for maintaining the mobility and improving the quality of life for older people. This presentation outlines some of the major opportunities as well as technical challenges of pervasive healthcare based on body sensor networks (BSNs). The talk will address key research topics and recent advances in novel sensor design, low power RF transceiver, energy scavenging, biocompatibility, autonomic sensing, context awareness and multi-sensor data fusion. It will also highlight some of the practical examples of using BSN to move from episodic patient management to pervasive healthcare strategies that allow the capturing of transient abnormalities.

Short Bio:

Professor Guang-Zhong Yang received Ph.D. in Computer Science from Imperial College London and served as a senior and then principal scientist of the Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Unit of the Royal Brompton Hospital prior to assuming his current full-time academic post at Imperial. He is Director of Medical Imaging and Robotics, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, founding Director of the Royal Society/Wolfson Medical Image Computing Laboratory, and co-founder of the Wolfson Surgical Technology Laboratory at Imperial College. Professor Yang’s research has been focussed on Robotics, Sensing, and Medical Imaging. He pioneered the field of Body Sensor Networks (BSN) and received a number of international awards including the I.I. Rabi Award from the ISMRM and the Research Merit Award from the Royal Society.