Acute and permanent monitoring of infectious patients using a contactless, multispectral, optical measuring system

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Gunther Notni; Professor Dr. Christoph Schöbel; Professor Dr.-Ing. Karsten Seidl; Dr. Sivagurunathan Sutharsan
• Subject Area: Biomedical Systems Technology ; Epidemiology and Medical Biometry/Statistics ; Medical Informatics and Medical Bioinformatics ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 458611451

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was identified as the cause of a respiratory disease known as coronavirus disease (Covid-19). SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted by respiratory uptake of virus-containing aerosols or droplets from the exhaled air of virus carriers. Therefore, in addition to wearing a mouth-nose cover and maintaining a sufficient safety distance, avoiding unnecessary personal contact is one of the most important infection control strategies. After a stable phase in the course of the disease, patients suffering from COVID-19 can suffer from an increasing, life-threatening lack of oxygen saturation (SpO2) in the blood. If oxygen therapy fails, this can lead to necessary ventilator therapy or even the use of lung replacement procedures. However, bed capacities of intensive care and monitoring units are limited. In stable patients suffering from COVID-19, it is therefore important to closely monitor vital signs in order to detect a critical course as early as possible. Only this ensures an early transfer from the normal ward to an intensive care unit with initiation of the above mentioned actions under continuous monitoring. During lock-down, the regular check-ups of patients with chronic diseases were reduced in order to minimize the risk of infection. At the same time, those patients stated not to attend planned medical check-ups or even urgent medical consultations for fear of infection. The use of telemedical methods offers a high innovatory potential. Clinical studies have shown that telemedical management of patients with chronic diseases such as heart failure can be very successful in reducing mortality and hospital stays as well as improving quality of life and have been shown to be able to generate cost savings for the healthcare system. There is currently insufficient data for an evidence-based assessment of the benefit of telemedical applications in the context of an epidemic or pandemic. Even if there is a high technical innovation potential, care must be taken to ensure that these solutions are not developed without the users in mind. The aim of the project is to realize a miniaturized sensor system based on contactless determination of vital parameters (oxygen saturation, body temperature, respiratory rate, pulse). The development of a sensor system for the continuous, contactless monitoring of vital parameters would not only enable the early detection of a critical deterioration of initially stable COVID-19 patients, but could also lead to an optimized care of other patients with an increased risk of infection in the home based setting. Dynamic changes in vital parameters could indicate a worsening of health status. Early detection could prevent hospitalization by optimizing individual therapies. In case of a necessary hospitalization, personal contact and thus a possible transmission of infection from or to medical personnel could be minimized by contactless monitoring.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants