Vital signs: project aims to bring artificial intelligence into healthcare

The research network, involving the Universities of Nottingham, Oxford and Warwick, will identify technologies that can provide more personalised and responsive care for cancer and intensive care patients, and those with chronic wounds.

The three-year, EPSRC-funded project, which is being led by Prof Stephen Morgan at Nottingham University, will investigate technologies to monitor patients and administer medicines or adjust treatments as necessary, using information from built-in sensors.

A particular focus of the research will be on devices that use the type of closed loop control system of feedback and intelligence found in power electronics used to control motors, said Morgan.

“These continuously measure and feed their output back into the system, so they can constantly adjust,” he said. “So in healthcare, they would monitor a particular parameter relating to the wellbeing of the patient, and continuously adapt the treatments accordingly.”

Mathematical models used in machine-learning for artificial intelligence (AI) will help technology designers to understand how the body works, and how diseases such as cancer behave.