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Data Visualization for the Epilepsy research Kit for Kids

Data Visualization for the Epilepsy research Kit for Kids

We have recently published a case study about a Mirror HR application, a grand prize winner for the Microsoft annual Global Hackathon 2019. The application uses SciChart charting library to display the realtime biometric data on the mobile phones. There is one family story behind that case study, that is so heartwarming, live-ascertaining, powerful, inspirational that we wanted to share it here in the blog and spread the word.

The Mirror Concept

Francesca Fedeli and Roberto D’Angelo have a son named Mario. Mario was just 10 days old when he had a stroke, which caused the big right part of his brain to be gone. This meant he was going to be limited by not being able to move the left side of his body.

Parents have started the rehabilitation process that was based on activating the mirror neurons in Mario’s brain. It works like this, when you do something, a simple action of grabbing a pen with your left hand, for example, the person who watches you doing it activates the same neurons in their brain as you if he or she was in fact performing that action of grabbing a pen.

Soon Francesca and Roberto realized that it is not only the movements that their son was mirroring, but it was also their state of mind. That realization was life changing, they understood they cannot show their son that they were depressed or vulnerable. Instead they wanted to translate to him that “what you are missing is just an opportunity to grow” – Roberto says in the Ted Talk.

And so, in the video above you can see Mario, their little son walking up the stage!

Foundations of FightTheStroke organization and MirrorHR application

In 2014 Francesca and Roberto have founded FightTheStroke organization with the mission to ensure a better future for young survivors of the stroke and their families. They wanted to help not just their son but other kids like him, by gathering the knowledge about the childhood strokes and raising the awareness on the topic. Finally, they wanted to encourage and inspire the further research on ‘disruptive’ therapies.

Epilepsy is a chronic noncommunicable disease of the brain that affects people of all ages.
Source:World Health Organization

Stroke is one of the things that can causes epilepsy, when Mario was 3 years old, he started having sleep-related seizures.

See more pictures of the family and read the history of FightTheStroke Organization here: https://en.fightthestroke.org/chisiamo

Because the seizure can happen at any time and could be life-threatening it requires immediate actions. Roberto and his wife would take turns in co-sleeping duties for years, checking on their son while he is asleep. Parents like them go through a trauma, they feel helpless and the great level unknowns raises the anxiety, – Roberto shares.

In a desire to get at least some control back Roberto and his colleagues has created a concept of an app MirrorHR. The application that would allow the live monitoring of the patient vital signs. The team has participated in Microsoft Hackathon, where they worked just like a startup company, worked hard for about three months to bring the proof of concept to life and make it available for testing.

Epilepsy research is fragmented and hospitals and physicians are limited by the care often provided in silos and the lack of unified access needed for analysis and trending of large scale data. – www.mirrorhr.org

The application aims to give some control back to the parents or caregivers by providing the ability to monitor the vital signs of the kids or patients remotely and live. It alerts when anomalous activity happens that could lead to seizure and so if needed the timely action can be taken.

What is MirrorHR application

MirrorHR is an epilepsy research kit for kids. There are two main visual parts to the application. The first one is the realtime monitoring of biometric data.

MirrorHR application uses a wearable device, like an apple watch, for example, to read the biometric data from sensors of a kid who is suffering with seizures.

Learn more about the MirroHR application https://en.fightthestroke.org/mirrorhr

It then sends the data over Bluetooth or WiFi to the phone where MirrorHR application is installed.

The application visualizes the biometric data in a form of a chart. This allows the remote realtime monitoring of the kid’s state. It simply allows parents or caregivers to constantly see what is going on right now.

When an anomalous activity happens that might indicate a seizure, the application will alert the parents. The parent can take an immediate action or mark it as false if it was.

The second big part of an application is learning from a history data. The live data is recorded, and the application allows to go back to weekly views. In the future the plan is to create monthly views as well. You can pan and zoom the chart, drill down to the areas of interest.

There is also a video log that helps to keep a track of the symptoms and kids’ behavior.

Next step would be to use AI to learn from the data patterns and better understanding the seizure triggers. That along can lead to further medical advances in the discovery of seizure treatments.

There is big part of MirrorHR that is not so much about the application itself but about the support to be given to the parents and caregivers. There many other big goals set in front of Roberto and the team, but it all starts with the monitoring.

If you think that MirrorHR can benefit your family, complete the application for a free trial of MirrorHR today. Visit www.mirrorHR.org.

Looking for a data visualization tool for MirrorHR

At the early stages of the project Roberto has contacted SciChart support with the inquiry about charting library for mobile:

“..after having tried every seizure detection tool on the market, with no success, to continue in our mission to support kids with cerebral palsy, we started to develop app to, at least, collect data. So visualizing that data is very important. I have tested many chart frameworks for iOS/Android but flexibility and performances are not optimal (we collect 60x60x12 datapoints for night on Heart Rate for now with the plan to add more sensors and analyze the impact of stress, quality of sleep, emotions etc).
We are at early stage, still the idea of offering some hours of sleep to kids and parents it’s motivating us (and me as first user with my son)…”

The application live monitoring of biometric data requires about 1 data sent every 4 seconds and up to 20 data points per second. This data has to be recorded for at least 9 to 10 hours, which is in total displaying of 9,000 to 720,000 data points.

The recorded data is used to create the history view. The history view of a weekly data would require displaying from 150,000 data points up to 12,000,000.

SciChart has been chosen to supply the application with realtime remote data visualization. SciChart was the only software component in the world which is able to handle the required capacity allowing realtime monitoring of the biometric data. It was also the only one allowing a history view of data, that is further used to analyze and learn from data patterns.

MirrorHR has been sponsored by SciChart as a part of university non-for-profit projects. We are very happy to be a part of it and help the team to make this happen.

SciChart in Tech Medical and Digital Health

By providing the realtime data visualization and monitoring In MirrorHR application SciChart has given that control back to Roberto and Francesca which they were looking for. They can now sleep at night.

There are so much more high-performance charts can add value to. Specially if you think mobile phones, that are the small computers we carry around in our hands every day.

SciChart is already used in 80% of top tech Medical Device companies and from them we have learned, that:

  • realtime data visualization enables live remote monitoring of patients’ data,
  • visualization of big data allows using AI to learn from patterns and improve the diagnosis accuracy,
  • high-performance charting increases the speed of diagnoses
  • the software updates provide with the software reliability.

If you are innovating the digital health field, you should contact SciChart team for a free trial version.

By Yuliko Cydyulko | Aug 25, 2020

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