Telemedicine is a technology-rich alternative to a face-to-face patient/physician consultation that often employs video-conferencing links, electronic patient records, and medical instruments used by patients without care provider assistance. Since the mid-1990s, telemedicine technology has been increasingly viewed as a means to lower health care costs while increasing care quality and therefore quality of life. Health monitoring and assessment tools that can either be worn by an individual or exist in their local environment play an important role in this decentralized health care model. With the advent of robust wireless standards, handheld consumer electronics, and a pervasive Internet presence, an inexpensive and high-impact telemedicine model is now realistic. This health care delivery approach has the potential to replace the model of increasing rural patient migration toward nursing homes and assisted-living facilities with a model that employs intelligent medical devices and distributed cyber-infrastructures that promote independent living and successful aging at home.
Focus areas. To this end, research in the K-State Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department has focused on technologies that promote ambulatory health monitoring. The K-State Medical Component Design Laboratory (MCDL) has served as a hub for that activity, supporting projects in the following areas:
Ambulatory health-monitoring devices for humans and animals (wearable or embedded in the local environment), light-based sensors, signal-processing algorithms, wireless connectivity, and supporting information infrastructures.
Interoperability standards and plug-andplay component models that allow sensor collections matched to patient needs to be assembled rapidly.
Technology to engage students in the learning process and to track knowledge retention. These research efforts are integrated with educational offerings that support the Regents-approved bioengineering option within electrical engineering, an option that also serves pre-medicine students and that has been in place nearly 35 years.
Laboratory support. MCDL grant-funded efforts total $5.2M, with one-third of those funds directly supporting ECE personnel and resources. Primary funding for these efforts has come from the National Science Foundation-CAREER, ITR, DUE, EEC, CRI, SIR, REESE and Kansas EPSCoR programs, Sandia National Laboratories, K-State ECE, and the K-State Targeted Excellence Program. In-kind teaching and research contributions have come from National Instruments, SolidWorks Corporation, Spatial Corporation, iNTERFACEWARE, and Visionary Design Systems. Collaborators on these efforts have included K-State faculty-computing and information sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, math, physics, industrial and manufacturing systems engineering, kinesiology, human nutrition, and the Center on Aging; and Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Alabama-Huntsville, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Instruments, Cerner Corporation, Spatial Corporation, Meadowlark Hills, the Manhattan Senior Center, and Heartspring. MCDL projects have supported 27 graduate students, 27 undergraduate students, the publication of 54 peer-reviewed papers, and 41 third-party publications and press releases.
