| IASiS addresses pressure
ulcer incidence and treatment and aims to develop and
demonstrate an Intelligent Adaptable Surface for serving
as the skin/machine interface in therapy beds and wheelchair
seating systems. This surface is envisaged to be capable
of redistributing the pressure, strain and shear applied
on the skin. A controller and an algorithm optimizes the
load-time curve as pre-specified by the pressure-duration
threshold curve, thus protecting the tissues against prolonged
and excessive epidermal pressure-shear. This will in turn
prevent the onset or deterioration of pressure ulcers.
Diagnosis and prevention will rely on intelligent optical
fiber sensing devices that can identify the values and
coordinates of excessive epidermal loadings and will
provide feedback information to an adaptable mattress
or seat mechanism. This adaptable mechanism comprises
of self-shaping elements and is responsible for relieving
pressure and strain in a timely manner according to
the information received by the sensing modules. To
this end, IASiS intends to develop optical fiber-based
two-dimensional pressure/strain/shear sensing elements
and demonstrate their performance for the first on rehabilitation
applications. It will also integrate the intelligent
fiber-based sensing surface with the adaptable surface
mechanism, and finally IASiS will evaluate the performance
of the developed Intelligent Adaptable Surface through
extensive Laboratory as well as Clinical Trials….
To this end, IASiS will proceed along three principal
research and development lines:
 Development
of optical fiber-based two-dimensional pressure/strain/shear
sensing elements
Integration of the intelligent sensing surface with
the SAFE IAS adaptable surface
mechanism
Performance evaluation of the developed surface in laboratory
as well as in
clinical conditions
scientific and technological areas.
The design, integration and evaluation of such a surface
require a broad mixture of expertise on a variety of
cutting edge technology and state-of-the-art medical
aspects. These include in depth knowledge and experience
on pressure ulcer rehabilitation problems, expertise
on optical fiber sensors and feedback control systems
and, finally, biomedical engineering skills required
primarily for validation through Clinical Trials.
Following this rationale, the overall IASiS objective
is:
"The design, development and evaluation of an
Intelligent Adaptable Surface for pressure ulcer diagnosis,
prevention and therapy by means of its advanced sensing
and pressure/tension relief properties.”
MedCom's mission regards the research
and development of fiber-based sensing devices for industrial
applications. Medcom will focus its participation on
possible industrial applications of IASiS elements and
will pursue efforts for defining a clear evolution path
of the developed devices from research elements to actual
products for industrial purposes. We will also work
on the fabrication of fiber sensing structures relying
on Fiber Bragg Gratings, on the development of 2-D and
3-Dsensor pads for pressure/strain/shear measurements
and on the evaluation of the IASiS sensing elements
in laboratory conditions.
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