Keynote Speakers

The concept of monitoring individuals in the home and community settings was first pursued 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 since available systems to collect physiological data were rather obtrusive.  Over the past fifteen years, we have witnessed a great deal of progress in the field of wearable sensors and systems that has significantly changed this situation.  Advances in this field have finally provided the tools to implement and deploy technology with the capabilities required by clinicians to enable long-term monitoring of patients in the home and community settings.  These technologies provide the tools to achieve early diagnosis of diseases such as congestive heart failure, to facilitate the prevention of chronic conditions such as diabetes, to respond promptly to emergency situations such as a seizure in a patient with epilepsy, and to improve the clinical management of patients with chronic conditions.  The current focus on developing and deploying wearable systems targeting specific clinical applications has potential for leading to adoption of mHealth technology in the clinic in the next five years or so.  The potential role of mHealth technology in the clinical management of patients with late stage Parkinson’s disease will be discussed as an example of how monitoring individuals outside of the clinic could provide clinicians with new tools to improve the management of patients with chronic conditions.