Team 3: MONITORING POST-OPERATIVE HEAD-NECK CANCER PATIENTS VIA SELF-POWERED SMART INSOLES

Head and Neck cancer (HNC) patients receiving radiotherapy are at high risk of weight loss because of difficulty in swallowing and change of taste. Acute weight loss can even result in emergency room visit and hospital admission, which has happened to about one third of HNC patients. Thus, it is important to maintain weight for better radiotherapy delivery and treatment outcome. Data collection and timely intervention via efficient doctor-patients communication are two important factors to achieve this goal. To automatically measure patients’ weight, we will develop smart insoles which include pressure sensors, power generators, and Bluetooth modules. These sensors will measure weight and transmit sensor data to smart phones, which convey the data further to cloud storage for analysis. It also converts kinetic energy to electric energy to supply power to the system. This will minimize the efforts from patients and thus reduce data loss. To improve communication with patients and improve self-monitoring by patients themselves, a smart phone application will be developed for patients to control the smart insoles and to enable staff-patient and robot-patient communications. Specific components of this system will be developed by the hackathon team.

Team Lead: Guanglin Tang, PhD, Medical Artificial Intelligence and Automation Lab, https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/labs/maia/