Compliance to prescribed therapies is a common problem associated with long-term treatment, and will become even more problematic as the European population ages and chronic disease becomes more prevalent. There is strong evidence that increasing the level of patient compliance may have a far greater impact on the health of the population than improvements in specific medical treatments. The HeartCycle project intends to tackle this in two ways.

Firstly by creating a 'patient loop' that gives patients continuous feedback on their state of health, their progress towards achieving health status milestones, plus motivational tips and suggestions for a healthy lifestyle and diet. In the course of the project it will be investigated whether such measures will improve the adherence to prescribed therapies. Monitoring each patient's condition will be achieved using a combination of unobtrusive bio-sensors built into the patient's clothing or bed sheets and home appliances such as weighing scales and blood pressure monitors. Sensing of an individual patient's physical exertion, body orientation and ambient environment will provide additional information so that the system can put the monitoring data into context.

Secondly by enabling a 'professional loop' in which relevant data on a patient’s state of health and therapy adherence is automatically communicated to a hospital information system. This professional loop will allow doctors to monitor each patient's condition and therapy response in order to create optimized individual care plans, as well as allowing them to identify deterioration or sudden cardiac events that require immediate remedial action.

For further information, please visit:
http://www.heartcycle.eu

Project co-ordinator:
Philips Research

Partners:

• Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece);
• Clothing Plus Oy (Finland);
• CSEM Centre Suisse D'electronique Et De Microtechnique Sa (Switzerland);
• Empirica Gesellschaft für Kommunikations und Technologieforschung mbH (Germany);
• Faculdade Ciencias e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal);
• Fundación Vodafone España (Spain);
• Hospital Universitario Clínico San Carlos (Spain);
• Instituto de Aplicaciones de las Tecnologías de la Información y de las Comunicaciones Avanzadas (Spain);
• Medtronic Ibérica SA (Spain);
• Philips Electronics Nederland B.V. (The Netherlands);
• Philips Research (Germany);
• Politecnico Di Milano - Dipartimento di Bioingegneria (Italy);
• Rheinisch Westfälische Technische Hochschule (Germany);
• T-Systems ITC Iberia SA (Spain);
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain);
• Chinese University of Hong Kong (China);
• University of Hull (United Kingdom);
• Valtion Teknillinen Tutkimuskeskus (Finland).

Timetable: from 03/2008 – to 02/2012

Total cost: € 21.985.444

EC funding: € 14.100.000

Programme Acronym: FP7-ICT

Subprogramme Area: Personal health systems for monitoring and point-of-care diagnostics

Contract type: Collaborative project (generic)

• HeartCycle Project Sets Out to Create Innovative Telemonitoring Solutions
• Philips Will Lead a New European Research Project - HeartCycle