Smart sensors for daily-life data collection toward precision and personalized medicine: the TOLIFE project approach

Precision and personalized medicine is an advanced approach to healthcare that involves the use of smart technologies to collect population-wise data. It aims to empower clinicians to predict the most effective treatment for patients and to improve routine medical and public health practice. The potential clinical benefits of advancing precision and personalized medicine include early identifying people at risk for disease, modifying treatments based on large data sets, longitudinal monitoring of healthy people and patients, and better management and outcomes of diseases. Clinical data are largely based on this approach, and smart sensors will represent enabling technologies for personalized and precision medicine to consider also daily-life data of patients. TOLIFE is a project funded by the European Union to collect daily-life data of patients with complex chronic conditions, such as COPD, using non-invasive smart sensors. The sensor will be used to predict exacerbations, assess health outcomes, and characterize the patient’s health status. The smart sensors will be commercial or adapted for TOLIFE purposes. This work focuses on the architecture of the data collection approach in TOLIFE, the rationale of the selection of each sensor, the associated raw data, and high-level health-related parameters.