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Digital Health

Scientific coordinator: Giuseppe Prencipe

Software is becoming more and more pervasive in the healthcare space: for instance, FDA and other regulatory agencies are approving digital therapeutics (aka, “software as a drug”) through special and fast channels, wearable devices and IoT are becoming ubiquitous in healthcare and smart hospitals are producing huge amounts of digital data that may nurture analytics and AI platforms with an unprecedented experience. This is pushing towards a more and more pervasive spreading of person-centric models of healthcare, supported by a daily quality increase of AI models and their explainability, which is improving both the health management of individuals and their experience when facing health issues.

The goal of A³ Lab research is to exploit digital, algorithmic and AI technologies and know-how from different fields as a support to healthcare with the ultimate goal to enhance people’s quality of life.

In particular, we focus on using both algorithms and data structures techniques, and Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence methodologies to address the following themes: distance monitoring of patients and digital interaction with healthcare providers via wearable technologies that collect physiological parameters, health-systems engineering to optimize the operations and costs of healthcare systems and enhance the quality of the service, and BigData analytics to make medicine predictive and preventive.

Among recent results of A³ Lab, we mention two projects: AInCP and I-POTERI. The main goal of the first one, funded for 6M of euros by the EU under the call HORIZON-HLTH-2021-DISEASE-04, is the clinical validation of AI for providing a personalized motor clinical profile assessment and rehabilitation of upper limb in children with unilateral Cerebral Palsy; the second one, funded for 2M of euros by the Tuscany Region, focuses on the post-surgical cardiac rehabilitation through an increased use of telemonitoring of the patients, thus helping them during the follow-up process staying at home.

Members of the A³ Lab have also co-funded two start-ups, nowadays spin-offs of the University of Pisa, which deal with another angle of Digital Health, namely performance evaluation in sports and wellness: they are PlayeRank and TennisCommander.

Selected Publications

A³ Lab