ETH RESC - SPS Funding Programme
Research Call 3 2022: Monitoring Technologies for Clinical Decision Making in Spinal Cord Injury
The ETH RESC – Swiss Paraplegic Foundation Funding Programme supports research and development that addresses challenges and opportunities in the area of personalised health for individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI).
The research grants are intended to promote interdiscipli-nary and translational research and development projects to establish new directions for future rehabilitation such as the holistic management of impairments along the continuum-of-care. The overall aim is to develop novel solutions for treatment and assistance to improve the accessibility and quality in rehabilitation medicine, and to make our environment more inclusive in general.
The present call initiates the first phase with the distribution of CHF 450’000, followed by the second call phase with a funding volume to be defined.
Research topic
Applicants are invited to propose novel sensing technology and artificial intelligence methods for outpatient monitoring with direct application to individuals with SCI. Recognizing new patterns of clinical signs and/or symptoms, or indirect correlated metrics could lead to detection of a medical problem onset much more precisely and earlier than today, reducing the burden on affected persons and the healthcare system.
Due to the loss of sensation, persons with SCI do not perceive warning signs for a certain medical problem, e.g. pain. In addition, clinical symptoms are often either absent or unspecific (for example, new or intensified spasticity may be a sign for a pressure sore, a urinary tract infection, a broken leg, or an unrecognized burn). In addition, secondary medical problems after SCI frequently occur without any warning signs. Therefore, persons with SCI undergo medical examinations, so-called health-checks, at regular intervals. On one hand, many patients undergo regular examinations without any clinical consequence, putting both a medical burden on affected persons and a financial burden on the healthcare system.
Examples include new data acquisition techniques and artificial intelligence methods for identification and treatment of conditions, such as pulmonary infections, urinary-tract infections, bladder dysfunction, pressure injuries, cardiovascular diseases, and thrombosis.
This programme aims to drastically change medical care for people with SCI, from a standardized follow-up driven by medical guidelines alone to an individualised, risk-stratified interaction, including the needs and expectations of the affected persons. To this end, the funded projects must incorporate a direct collaboration with one or more relevant spinal cord injury centres to prove the proposed solutions in collaboration with medical experts and end-users.
Submission deadline: 30.09.2022
Earliest starting date: 01.01.2023
The grant has been awarded to two promising projects aimed at developing novel sensing technology and artificial intelligence methods for outpatient monitoring with direct application for individuals with a spinal cord injury (SCI).
Project 1: An artificial intelligence (AI)-based telemonitoring tool to measure pain in spinal cord injury patients in at-home settings
According to Professor Stanisa Raspopovic, “The project aims to provide a telemonitoring system to quantify and qualify the impact of multidimensional pain markers on the subjective pain experience of SCI patients, leveraging the use of advanced AI techniques. Thanks to the combination of wearable technology, collecting biometric data and psychological assessments, our AI-based approach has the potential to improve the overall quality of life and productivity of SCI individuals with chronic pain, reduce the number of visits to the clinic and healthcare costs by providing an added support to doctors during the diagnosis and treatment, and improve the efficacy of pain management by promoting individualised therapies.”
Project timeline: Q1/2023 – Q2/2024
Project team: Neuroengineering Lab
Project 2: A lightweight force measurement wheel system for assessing wheelchair activity in daily life
“In this project, we will bring to life a novel in-wheel sensor for monitoring wheelchair users in their daily life through an unobtrusive embedded form of wearable technology for manual wheelchairs. This will allow us to advance outpatient monitoring in community settings for secondary health conditions such as shoulder problems, cardiovascular activity and pressure injury onsets. This compact sensor can help us to track daily activities and effort, and achieve a better movement quality analysis, analogous to using ground reaction forces for gait pattern analysis”, says Dr Diego Paez-Granados, Head of the Spinal Cord Injury Artificial Intelligence Lab.
In a collaboration between the Laboratory for Movement Biomechanics and the Spinal Cord Injury Artificial Intelligence Lab, this project fosters complementing sets of expertise in developing mobile sensor systems and monitoring activities of outpatients living with SCI towards ultimately enabling the development of personalised prevention and training programmes.
Project timeline: Q1/2023 – Q1/2025
Interdisciplinary project team:
Laboratory for Movement Biomechanics