HeartMan

M. Luštrek, B. Cvetković, R. Blatnik, M. Freser

HeartMan project

Short description, main aims and objectives of the project:

Congestive heart failure is the most frequent cause of hospitalization in people aged over 65. Its management involves medications, monitoring of fluid intake and weight, exercise and lifestyle modifications, which most patients find very difficult. The HeartMan project will help them by developing an mHealth solution using state-of-the-art wearables. Its core will be a decision support system (DSS) that will provide personalised advice. The DSS will partially base its advice on evidence-based predictive models. One of these models has been developed in our previous project Chiron, and can predict how a patient will feel based on telemonitoring data. Another key feature of the DSS will be the delivery of the advice through a cognitive behavioural therapy based on cognitive dissonance. This is a proven approach that exploits the dissonance between healthy attitudes and unhealthy behaviours to improve the behaviours. It will be augmented by mindfulness exercises, which are expected to make the patients more receptive to the HeartMan’s advice. In developing the HeartMan system, a human-centred approach will be used. The resulting system will be validated in two trials, which will test its medical effectiveness and usability.

Our department had the leading role in conceiving the project and is now coordinating it. We are also in charge of developing the DSS, and we will develop some of the intelligent methods for the interpretation of sensor data from the wearables.

http://heartman-project.eu/