Bonato Paolo
Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Boston, MA 02114, USA.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2010;2010:2021-4. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5628037.
The concept of monitoring individuals in the home and community settings was introduced more than 50 years ago, when Holter monitoring was proposed (in the late 1940s) and later adopted (in the 1960s) as a clinical tool. However, technologies to fully enable such vision were lacking and only sporadic and rather obtrusive monitoring techniques were available for several decades. Over the past decade, we have witnessed a great deal of progress in the field of wearable sensors and systems. Advances in this field have finally provided the tools to implement and deploy technology with the capabilities required by researchers in the field of patients' home monitoring. These technologies provide the tools to achieve early diagnosis of diseases such as congestive heart failure, prevention of chronic conditions such as diabetes, improved clinical management of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson's disease, and the ability to promptly respond to emergency situations such as seizures in patients with epilepsy and cardiac arrest in subjects undergoing cardiovascular monitoring. Current research efforts are focused on the development of systems enabling clinical applications. The current focus on developing and deploying wearable systems targeting specific clinical applications has the potential of leading to clinical adoption within the next five to ten years.
对个人进行居家和社区环境监测的概念早在50多年前就已提出，当时有人提议进行动态心电图监测（20世纪40年代末），并在后来（20世纪60年代）作为一种临床工具被采用。然而，当时缺乏能够完全实现这一设想的技术，几十年来只有零星且相当引人注目的监测技术。在过去十年中，我们目睹了可穿戴传感器和系统领域取得了巨大进展。该领域的进步最终为研究人员在患者居家监测领域实施和部署所需技术能力提供了工具。这些技术为实现诸如充血性心力衰竭等疾病的早期诊断、预防诸如糖尿病等慢性病、改善诸如帕金森病等神经退行性疾病的临床管理，以及对诸如癫痫患者的癫痫发作和心血管监测对象的心脏骤停等紧急情况做出及时反应提供了工具。当前的研究工作集中在开发能够实现临床应用的系统上。目前专注于开发和部署针对特定临床应用的可穿戴系统，有可能在未来五到十年内实现临床应用。
