Smarthealth Project: a connected home for health

In undertaking a healthcare project with Nantes University Hospital, the students on the project team were confronted with today’s challenges in healthcare; with a healthcare system seeking solutions to different issues: patient monitoring, connected homes, secure medical data, high hospitalization costs, remote monitoring systems.

‘Connected Home for Healthcare’ was a second- and third-year project-based specialisation at Centrale Nantes. Its format was original in that students did not follow regular classes as in most specialisations. The emphasis was on professional training with students working independently, and in a team, on an 8-month project. They were supervised by two members of school faculty, as well as by two representatives of Nantes University Hospital.

One of the key aspects of the work undertaken was live testing. After having obtained a significant number of connected objects from project partners, (Garmin, Altran and iHealth), two of the project team members' apartments were fitted out for one month in order to monitor their health data. There were different objectives behind this approach: obtaining real health data from a connected individual and gathering user feedback. Testing in real conditions would allow the team to validate or not the model as a whole.

Algorithms were also developed to cross-correlate different data, and model/simulate behaviour. One of the objectives going forward could be to create artificial intelligence which can recognize the characteristic patterns of development in a patient’s vital signs and thus predict and prevent critical deterioration.