i-IRONIC: Implantable/Wearable System for on-line Monitoring of Human Metabolic Conditions

Sandro Carrara of EPFL/LSI, expert in biomedical circuits and systems

Catherine Dehollain of EPFL/STI/GR-SCI-STI/SCI-STI-CD, expert in Wireless electronics, RFID-circuit design, Low-power physiological sensing

Fabio Grassi of USI/Institute for Research in Biomedicine, expert in characterization of signal transduction pathways at different developmental stages of the murine T cell1

Qiuting Huang of ETHZ/Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS), expert in Long dist. RF comm.. RF and Mixed-Signal Design

Yusuf Leblebici of EPFL/STI/IEL/LSM, expert in Chip Design. Intelligent Detector. VLSI Design. High level specification and Synthesis-sensors development

Linda Thöny-Meyer of EMPA/Department Materials and Systems for Protection and Wellbeing of the Body, expert in biomaterials and biomolecules for medical and industrially interesting applications

The aim of this project is to study an innovative, multi-metabolites, highly integrated, fully implantable, and real-time monitoring system for human metabolism. The monitored metabolic molecules will be lactate, cholesterol, ATP, and others.

To pursue this aim, the project will develop an innovative technology by integrating SW/HW/RF/micro/nano/bio systems in three devices:

(i) a fully implantable sensors array for data acquisition;
(ii) a wearable station for remote powering and signal processing;
(iii) a remote station for data collection and storage.

The expected major breakthroughs will be in the areas of:

(i) software design for signal analysis;
(ii) HW/SW co-design;
(iii) multi-panel metabolites detection;
(iv) fully implantable sensors.

The project motivation is the improvement of health care with special focus on personalized therapy and chronic patients who require daily monitoring of different metabolic compounds. On-line monitoring for diagnosis and/or treatment of patients with specific physiological conditions (e.g., heart, cardiovascular, cancer diseases) or convalescents is a key factor to provide better, more rationale, effective and ultimately low-cost health care. On-line monitoring is also required in professionals and recreational sportsmen training, as well as in elderly and/or disabled citizen care. The ultimate goal is the extention of their autonomy, the improvement of their comfort levels and their integration into everyday life, and the maintenance of their safety by through embedded systems to alert emergency services in the event of a potentially dangerous situation (e.g. the public-transportation drivers).

Some systems for on-line monitoring are available in the market. They use wearable devices (accelerometers, heartbeat monitoring system, etc) but they do not measure metabolites. The only available real-time, implantable/wearable systems for metabolic control are limited to glucose monitoring and used by diabetic patients. However, many different molecules present crucial relevance in human metabolism. They are monitored daily in general hospital practice by automatic blood sampling. The amount of metabolic molecules is estimated by using off-line, large and expensive laboratory equipments. So far, there are no available implantable/wearable systems for multi-metabolites, real-time, on-line monitoring of the human metabolism.

Thus, the main out-puts of the project will be:

(i) fully implantable sensors system;
(ii) multi-panel sensors capable to sense lactate, cholesterol, ATP, and other metabolites, all in parallel, in real-time
(iii) new software algorithms for decoupling different contribution from different metabolites on the same sensor spot
(iv) new CMOS design for the fully-implanted, complex, and lowconsumption electronics for sensing and remote powering.

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