Wearing a vest with wireless hardware for five minutes a day can help heart failure patients stay away from the hospital

A nurse engineer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst leads a team of researchers who are developing a wearable vest system to monitor heart failure patients at home and find out when their condition worsens
.

Early detection of this acute decompensated heart failure (ADHF) may lead to treatment changes and other interventions to prevent hospitalization, which is common
among the 6 million adults affected by heart failure in the United States.

Assistant Professor Noyeonsik Noh, who holds a joint role in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Elaine Marieb School of Nursing and the School of Engineering, received a four-year, $2.

Noh noted that early detection of decompensated heart failure has traditionally relied on monitoring weight gain, but body weight alone cannot accurately measure fluid accumulation
that predicts a decline in the condition of patients with heart failure.

Noh will work with multidisciplinary teams from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the University of Massachusetts Chen School of Medicine, and the University of Connecticut to develop an innovative three-channel bioimpedance and ECG monitor that embeds reusable, dry, and flexible electrodes into a wearable cotton vest
.

"Basically, people with heart failure tend to have fluid
in their lungs.

Bioimpedance measures how the body blocks the flow of electrical currents
.

This vest only needs to be worn for five minutes
a day.

The researchers will test the system on a different group of heart failure patients who are at high
risk of developing ADHF after discharge.

"In the case of heart failure, the rate of readmissions is very high
," Noh said.