MU nabs $2.6 m NIH grant to develop wearable heart monitor
A wearable heart monitor could someday allow doctors to quickly see abnormalities in a patient's heart.
With that goal, the National Institutes of Health awarded the University of Missouri a $2.6 million grant to develop wearable monitors. A team of researchers on the project is led by Zheng Yan, an assistant professor in the department of biomedical, biological and chemical engineering and also the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
It is a four-year grant.
It's one of several NIH projects at MU, including another that will expand its space to develop genetically modified pigs for research.
The monitors would track the electrocardiogram, measuring the heart's electrical signal, and the seismocardiogram, measuring the heart's vibrations.
Both together will provide a more accurate idea of what the heart is doing than one or the other would alone, Yan said.
“We want to provide comprehensive information about the status of a person’s heart,” Yan said in a news release. “Effects of heart disease can often happen unexpectedly, so it’s important to have continuous, long-term monitoring for early detection and timely interventions. We want this to help reduce the number of people succumbing to death from heart disease in the U.S.”
There are challenges, Yan said by phone.
"It's hard to make them operate on the human body to wear a long time," Yan said.
They need to be able to function for a week or more at a time, so they're been made to be breathable and also antibacterial and antiviral, he said.
It will resemble a t-shirt, but one that clings to the skin, he said.
"The t-shirt also must be soft and comfortable, not too hot," Yan said.
The heart-monitoring shirts also must be machine-washable, he said.
"We want them to be affordable to the general public," Yan said.
The signals would be recorded and could be shared with a healthcare provider.
The monitors can determine if something is wrong before the wearer knows, Yan said.
In the future, he said machine learning can be put to use to analyze data from the monitors and make health predictions for individuals
A wireless version may be a future research project.
There are now five graduate students working with Yan on the project, but the grant will allow him to recruit more, he said.
The ultimate goal is improving the quality of life for patients, he said.
"I'm really excited about the project," Yan said.
Roger McKinney is the Tribune's education reporter. You can reach him at rmckinney@columbiatribune.com or 573-815-1719. He's on Twitter at @rmckinney9.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: How NIH and MU are working to monitor heart problems early
