Title: Biosensor and Medical Device Technologies for the DRI Care Research and Technology Centre (CR&T)
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: The UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) is an initiative funded by the Medical Research Council, Alzheimer's Society and Alzheimer's Research UK. Funding details for UK DRI programmes will be added from 2020. This UK DRI programme will focus on the application of miniaturised low-power devices to support reliable home monitoring over long periods. The inability to characterise dementia in the home with direct measures of brain activity or descriptions of sleep and behaviour is a key technological challenge. The team will produce safe, reliable and usable technology to overcome this. One focus will be on developing unobtrusive ways to passively monitor behaviour accurately in the home such as through Ultra-wide band (UWB) impulse radar. A person’s movement can be monitored with sub-centimetre accuracy that promises sensitivity to agitation, circadian disruption and the occurrence of falls. A key feature of this technology is that it allows for non-contact, completely unobtrusive sensing. Two applications will be explored: (a) dynamic through-the-air sensing of movement and respiration; and (b) stationary sensing of physiology such as heart rate and respiration through devices embedded in furniture. A second focus will be on home measures of brain activity, which will unlock a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities. The researchers will develop a device for home use in dementia, which will allow low cost, continuous, home monitoring of brain activity using sparsely sampled EEG. The team is well-placed to do this through their expertise in ‘Hearable’ technology. This low energy technology allows brain, cardiac and respiratory function to be continuously monitored remotely using miniature sensors housed in an inconspicuous earpiece. Acoustic stimulation can also be delivered through Hearable technology, allowing them to test whether the brain network dynamics important for sleep and cognition can be modulated by carefully timed auditory stimuli that are phase-locked to brain activity. The team will investigate the optimal way to integrate non-invasive transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) with a wearable EEG monitor. The goal is to produce a system that can be managed by people living with dementia, and their caregivers in the home, to better enable the sustained administration of clinically effective doses of stimulation and potentially improve cognition, behaviour and sleep. Main objectives and research goals: 1. To develop passive low-cost ways of sensing movement, vital signs and monitoring behaviour in the home, including the application of ultra-wide band (UWB) radar. 2. To develop unobtrusive miniature devices that allow low-cost, continuous home monitoring of brain activity using sparsely sampled electroencephalography (EEG). 3. To integrate the new technology into the Healthy Home system, providing synchronised multi-modal data including EEG, movement, location, respiration, and heart rate.


Research activity codes: 4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES;4.2 EVALUATION OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Health categories: NEUROLOGICAL