Validation of a Novel Wearable Multistream Data Acquisition and Analysis System for Ergonomic Studies.

Nowadays, the growing interest in gathering physiological data and human behavior in everyday life scenarios is paralleled by an increase in wireless devices recording brain and body signals. However, the technical issues that characterize these solutions often limit the full brain-related assessments in real-life scenarios. Here we introduce the Biohub platform, a hardware/software (HW/SW) integrated wearable system for multistream synchronized acquisitions. This system consists of off-the-shelf hardware and state-of-art open-source software components, which are highly integrated into a high-tech low-cost solution, complete, yet easy to use outside conventional labs. It flexibly cooperates with several devices, regardless of the manufacturer, and overcomes the possibly limited resources of recording devices. The Biohub was validated through the characterization of the quality of (i) multistream synchronization, (ii) in-lab electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings compared with a medical-grade high-density device, and (iii) a Brain-Computer-Interface (BCI) in a real driving condition. Results show that this system can reliably acquire multiple data streams with high time accuracy and record standard quality EEG signals, becoming a valid device to be used for advanced ergonomics studies such as driving, telerehabilitation, and occupational safety.

Drugs don't work in patients who don't take them: Dr. Drin, the new ICT paradigm for chronic therapies.

Poor adherence to drug therapies still represents an unsolved problem. In order to provide a useful solution to chronic patients of all ages--with particular attention to the elderly--who are subjected to complex therapeutic regimen, an innovative ICT solution, called Dr.Drin, has been designed and tested. The aim of the developed framework is to assist the patient during the therapy and to enable and support a bidirectional communication between all healthcare stakeholders (doctors, caregivers and family members) and the patient. During the screening phase, patients were interviewed to understand what are the common practices they usually adopt to remember when and how to take a drug. The solutions which they rely the most on are the list of drugs, writing on the packaging, and setting up alarms. Patients who complained about difficulties of adherence and who had a smartphone were subsequently recruited to test Dr.Drin over a three-months period. In the following, preliminary results from the first twelve patients are presented and analyzed to prove the effectiveness of Dr.Drin in supporting patients adherence to therapies.