The overwhelming majority of ambulatory patients in modern healthcare systems are monitored only manually, by members of the clinical staff.  There is an urgent need for mobile (“m-health”) systems, comprising unobtrusive patient-worn sensors and lightweight processing (such as via smartphones) that are sufficiently robust for use in clinical practice.

The CHI Lab is actively researching (i) the tracking of vital signs from sensors in a robust manner; (ii) performing intelligent processing of the resulting data to stratify patients according to risk; and (iii) working on forecasting methods for predicting serious physiological events.  These collaborative projects include applications in Oxford University Hospitals and with university spin-outs.

The BSP-ML group also has an active programme of research into wearables for digital health, from the development of novel wrist-worn sensors to track blood pressure changes to the integration of commercially-available wearables into a virtual High-Dependency Unit (vHDU) for the continuous monitoring of vital signs in high-risk hospitalised patients. For more details please visit the Vital-Sign Monitoring Lab website.