Invited by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Professor Yuanting Zhang of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) gave a talk on cardiovascular health informatics  on April 17 in the College of Engineering.

Health Informatics (HI) is a rapidly evolving interdisciplinary field concerning the acquisition, management and use of information in health. It encompasses issues from the personal to global, ranging from thorough medical records to sharing data about disease outbreaks among governments and international health organizations. In 2008, HI was described as one of the 14 grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.

HI is vital to facilitate early prediction and treatment of major diseases such as cardiovascular diseases.

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer in the world. For some patients, it outbreaks quickly and requires urgent treatment. Quick acquisition of patients’ health information is necessary for medical teams to respond rapidly and accurately.

Zhang and his team have been working in this field for over six years, with main funding from the 973 program. They aim to design wearable medical devices and biosensors for mobile health, i.e.  T-shirts and bed linens, which could be used by the patients themselves at home or during daily activities. The device will ideally provide real-time monitoring of the patient’s hearts and blood vessels, and can produce a large number of biomedical markers in a very short time if needed.

Zhang said that there is a tendency in developed countries to build an effective healthcare system, composed of the patients themselves, their homes, local communities and the hospitals. He stressed that the government must take charge in establishing the system and specifying the responsibilities of each party involved through legislation.