CS 8803 O29: Health Sensing and Interventions

Overview

Health sensing and interventions (HSI) aims to bridge the gap between the medical sciences and computing. At a high level, this course explores how to sense the human body and the various conditions/contexts that affect our health.  More specifically, this course will investigate:

• Different systems of human physiology (high level)
• Existing devices that can measure our health
• Devices that can provide feedback to users regarding their health
• How these medical devices and health technologies work
• Which technology to choose for a given problem
• How can we design new devices ourselves?

We will explore the different systems of the human body and discuss how to measure (or trigger in case of interventions) various aspects of them. We will brainstorm possible solutions, discuss how to test them, and discuss the implications of different approaches. Students will be able to, but are not required to, build a physical device. A health sensing kit will be available for students to use. Some solutions require hardware, while others can be based on software as a medical device—such as SaMD (Software as a Medical Device), including mobile applications, data analysis, and algorithmic solutions. Students should leave this course with the skills and confidence to tackle problems in healthcare that previously seemed insurmountable.