Design of a remote treatment monitoring and seizure warning system framework for epilepsy patients

Personal health care technologies in chronic diseases face the challenge to design holistic approaches where health care involves not only the medical specialist for treatment and monitoring, but the patient and the family. Epilepsy is a term used for a group of chronic disorders with diverse etiology characterized by recurrent seizures, caused by an abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Treatment monitoring requires continuous collaboration of the patient and the family to register manually a diary of activities, seizures, seizures triggers and symptoms associated to medication in order to reach optimal therapy. Patients with non-controlled seizures and their families have to deal with a restricted quality of life: the patient is exposed to physical risks when seizures appear under any circumstance and place. In this paper a remote patient treatment monitoring and warning system framework design based on mobile technology is proposed, with multiple input, seizure detection with a smartphone accelerometer, automatic and manual seizure warning and location of the patient through GPS and a social support network. This design approach is patient-and family-centred, as they are the source of individual information in a particular environment, condition and treatment response. It also represents a first proposal of a potential ubiquitous health care system through a wearable device.