Edgar Lobaton and Alper Bozkurt, associate professors in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, are working to improve wearable health-monitoring devices, on a research project that could lead to people being able to detect an asthma attack sooner. Lobaton, along with two UNC-Chapel Hill researchers, will receive $1 million from the National Science Foundation for their collaborative project, “A Data-Driven Approach to Enhancing Wearable Device Performance – An Early Asthma Exacerbation Detection Study.”
“What makes this project unique is that we’re focusing specifically on trying to identify when we have good signals from these types of wearable devices,” Lobaton says.
Using data collected from the devices, the team will employ machine learning “to automatically learn when we can rely on these signals” to make an accurate prediction about an asthma exacerbation (commonly known as an asthma attack).
Originally published Sept. 27, 2019.