Novel Neural Network Architectures for Wearable Biosignals

Project abstract: 

The healthcare system is changing rapidly from reactive disease care towards predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory (P4) health care. Embedded in this revolutionary shift are wearable devices, e.g. smart watches, garments or patches as enabling technologies towards this aim. They enable continuous observation of various health parameters such as heart rate, sleep patterns, activity levels and thereby offer an objective and real-time assessment of the personal health status. Although these devices are not always as accurate as medical-grade hardware, they have proven valuable for various use cases and see increasing adoption in clinical guidelines. In this project, we combine the expertise of three partners from technical departments as well as medical centers: Kyoto University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and University of Göttingen. All three partners have a complementary track record in the field of electrocardiography (ECG) -- the electrical measurement of the human heart -- which will be combined to work towards the aim of P4 medicine for cardiovascular health. Next to the research work, this project offers a summer school on "Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Applications" for all HeKKSaGOn partners and in-depth intercultural experience for multiple students.

The lead coordination from Göttingen and the co-coordinator from Kyoto already have an active cooperation that was initialized in the framework of the HeKKSaGOn online event "Seven Dialogues for Future Research and Science" and was deepened in meeting in person in the framework of the "9th Japanese - German University Presidents’ Conference - 21/22 September 2023" and resulted in a joint research project which is currently under review at the IEEE EMB 2024 conference. This network will be expanded by involving the partners from KIT.

Lead coordinator: 

Name: Nicolai Spicher
Position: Group Leader
Institution: University of Göttingen
Department, Faculty: Department of Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medicine

Co-coordinator:

Name: Kana Eguchi
Position: Program-Specific Assistant Professor
Institution: Kyoto University
Department, Faculty: Department of Real World Data R&D, Graduate School of Medicine