The European Commission has launched an €8m IoT environments project to champion intelligent, autonomous and human-centred healthcare.

The IntellIoT project will use artificial intelligence (AI) and IoT technologies so patients with cardiovascular diseases can be treated remotely, easier, faster and with higher quality.

The three-year project also aims to support the rollout of IoT technologies in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.

The Covid-19 crisis has posed demands on healthcare systems worldwide, highlighting the need to develop human-centred and autonomous technologies that can optimise patient-management and treatment. The use of biometric sensors and remote health assistance allows close monitoring without the need for face-to-face consultation or physical hospital visits.

Activity trackers and health monitoring devices are instrumental for the early detection of the disease or possible infection, right up to the point where a virus infection starts to spread.

With IntellIoT, the European Commission has embarked on an €8m project comprising a consortium of 13 partners from nine countries, which will enable autonomous IoT systems that show intelligence at the edge close to the user, where patients receive instantaneous healthcare advice without transferring a large amount of data to central premises. Not only will this help with immediate coronavirus issues, but will also help with any future outbreaks.

In the fight against the coronavirus, digital technologies can play a role in the maintenance of daily life and economic and social activities, as well as in the recovery of industry and business.

“There is, however, a need to rethink healthcare in light of this pandemic,” said Rolf Riemenschneider, head of the commission’s IoT sector. “With an investment of about €80m under the focus area of digitising European industry, the commission has developed interoperability mechanisms for integrating healthcare devices into our daily lives. Accelerated through Covid-19, IoT applications now need to look beyond connecting a variety of different wearable devices, by adding intelligence, autonomy and security to the IoT edge node, close to the users.”

IntellIoT is one of six research and innovation actions initiated by the European Commission in 2020, specifically with the goal of developing innovations and collaborations by concentrating on the IoT powered by 5G, designating a €47.9m EU budget to these six activities in question.

“IntellIoT stands for intelligent IoT,” said Vivek Kulkarni, senior key expert at Siemens and coordinator of the consortium. “Together with the partners, we aim to develop a reference architecture to enable IoT environments for semi-autonomous IoT applications endowed with intelligence that evolves with the human-in-the-loop, based on an efficient and reliable IoT edge-computation and network communication infrastructure.”

This framework will be able to adapt dynamically to changes in the environment with built-in and assured security, privacy and trust.

Championing the development of integrated, distributed, human-centred and trustworthy IoT environments, IntellIoT is made up of 13 partners, including the University General Hospital of Heraklion, which has been put to the test throughout the pandemic.

“The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus has challenged healthcare systems across the world,” said the hospital’s Fragkiskos Parthenakis. “In the beginning of the pandemic we all faced a lack of information and data, be it patients, doctors and political decision makers. Over the last months, we have learned that data are very important for decision making in any sector but especially in healthcare. Intelligent IoT that provides humanised, trusted and secure data will help facilitate the use of distributed AI for decision making and better service in healthcare in the future.”

Over the course of the next three years, IntellIoT will leverage technologies in 5G, cyber security, distributed computing, augmented reality and tactile internet that can empower healthcare professionals and establishments to work more efficiently and with greater insight, and that places patients’ needs and their wellbeing at the forefront.

The use case specifically supports the remote care of patients with cardiovascular diseases, a patient group who are particularly at risk. By allowing remote care, unnecessary hospitalisations can be prevented, pressure on hospitals is relieved, healthcare costs are reduced, and the quality of patient care is improved.

New IoT applications will enable autonomous health monitoring and interventions by carefully preserving the privacy and security of patients’ data and providing trust assurance. Patients will be engaged via a rehabilitation programme, say for heart failure patients or patients recovering from cardiac arrests. They can use sensors and devices without being limited to their home or to the hospital for carrying out the rehabilitation.

This way, patients can re-immerse into their normal environment safely and quicker than what is currently possible, or they can be treated remotely to reduce the risk of further infection. Clinicians act as human-in-the-loop, receive updates from the IoT technology, and are notified when their intervention is required.

In the healthcare project, the University General Hospital of Heraklion will work with experts from health technology company Philips, with the aim of developing AI algorithms that support existing diagnostic healthcare devices and sensors, and to evaluate new tech architectures with end users, such as patients and medical experts in realistic environments at the hospital.

Through enabling these technologies, IntellIoT can help furnish the hospitals of the future with intelligent devices that autonomously conduct health monitoring and interventions, and analyse large swathes of data while relieving pressure on otherwise overloaded healthcare systems. Such developments are especially pertinent in the context of a pandemic, in which remote and sophisticated patient management is paramount.

Anca Bucur, senior researcher at Philips, said: “By applying AI in a way that improves decision-making for healthcare providers, IntellIoT has the potential to help capture and make sense of each patient’s data throughout their unique care pathway, ultimately supporting the quadruple aim: an improved experience for staff and patients, better health outcomes and a lower cost of care.”

Apart from healthcare, IntellIoT will foster the creation of IoT applicable to agriculture and manufacturing, while fomenting an ecosystem united by a shared vision committed to privacy, security, trust, and in which the intelligence of humans and devices can seamlessly intertwine.

With collaboration and open-source sharing being two cornerstones of the European Commission regarding its projects, IntellIoT will hold two open calls geared towards enabling start-ups and SMEs to build applications, services and extensions on the project’s framework in three concrete use cases: healthcare, agriculture and manufacturing. SMEs and start-ups will receive up to €150,000 to execute pilot projects alongside the 13 consortia partners, to apply the IntellIoT technology, improve their products and services, and create new jobs.

“The goal of this collaboration will ensure the applicability of the technology framework developed by IntellIoT in real-world scenarios, as well as to allow innovations created on top of the IntellIoT framework and to build an ecosystem around the technology for exploitation beyond the project lifetime,” said Arne Bröring, senior research scientist at Siemens and technical project manager of IntellIoT. 

IntellIoT comprises a consortium of 13 partners spread across nine countries: Siemens, Eurecom, Aalborg University, University of Oulu, TT Control, Telecommunication Systems Institute, Technical University of Crete, Philips, Sphynx Analytics, University of St Gallen, Holo-Industrie 4.0 Software, AVL Commercial Driveline & Tractor Engineering, Startup Colors UG and University General Hospital of Heraklion.