Digitale Zukunft gemeinsam gestalten

Continuous health monitoring in a vehicle enables the earlier detection of symptoms of cardiovascular diseases. In this work, we designed flexible and thin electrodes made of polyurethane for long-term electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring while driving. We determined the time for reliable ECG recording to evaluate the effectiveness of the electrodes. We recorded data from 19 subjects under four scenarios: rest, city, highway, and rural. The recording time was five min for rest and 15 min for the other scenarios. The total recording (950 min) is publicly available under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license. We used the simultaneous truth and performance level estimation (STAPLE) algorithm to detect the position of R-waves. Then, we derived the RR intervals to compare the estimated heart rate with the ground truth, which we obtained from ECG electrodes on the chest. We calculated the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and averaged it for the different scenarios. Highway had the lowest SNR (−6.69 dB) and rural had the highest (−6.80 dB). The usable time of the steering wheel was 42.46% (city), 46.67% (highway), and 47.72% (rural). This indicates that steering-wheel-based ECG recording is feasible and delivers reliable recordings from about 45.62% of the driving time. In summary, the developed electrodes allow continuous in-vehicle heart rate monitoring, and our publicly available recordings provide the opportunity to apply more sophisticated data analytics.

COVID-19 served to teach governments many painful lessons about their pitfalls and challenges in managing public health crises. Although both practitioners and academics have been aware that crisis information systems (CIS) constitute a valuable tool for crisis prevention and management, their implementation to counteract COVID-19 lagged by months. To analyze this crisis management mismatch, in this paper, we examine and identify the structural challenges and shortcomings of government-initiated crisis management through CIS. This paper analyzes two CIS projects tackling the COVID-19 crisis, funded by the German government. Drawing on a complexity-lens and the NASSS-framework, key shortcomings are identified. We derive propositions for future CIS projects to enable crisis preparedness. Our outcomes suggest that adopting a complexity perspective in planning, initiating, and developing governmental CIS provides a promising avenue for achieving successful crisis management. We contribute to literature by highlighting the suitability of the complexity-lens in health crises.

This paper presents the concept and current workin progress of an android robot-patient for communication training of relatives of critically ill non-verbal patients with motor impairment. Additionally, this paper presents the initial results of a field study regarding the social interactions of a patient in need of out-of-hospital intensive care. Furthermore, the implementation of the ongoing development, different levels of abstractions of the android robot-patient and the subsequent training scenario are described. Subsequently, an initial simulation of an interaction mode is implemented, presented and compared to the actual patient’s behavior.