What if it were possible to monitor the progression of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) on a day-to-day basis, beyond the hospital setting?

This was the question raised by Prof. Mamede de Carvalho, from Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, which led to the creation of HomeSenseALS, a project launched in 2021 that combines smartphones, sensors and Artificial Intelligence to monitor people with ALS in their everyday lives.

The system was developed by Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, in collaboration with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. Among its authors are CHRC researchers Duarte Folgado, Francisco Nunes and André Carreiro. The application combines two methods of data collection. On the one hand, it passively collects movement and behavioural data throughout the day, without requiring any action from the patient, while also safeguarding their privacy. On the other hand, it allows patients to carry out assessments at home, including functional questionnaires, voice and speech analysis tests, and breathing tests.

The work resulted in the article “HomeSenseALS: A Mobile Sensing and Self-Monitoring System to Monitor Patients with ALS in Everyday Life”, published in the scientific journal ACM Transactions on Computing for Healthcare.

The system is currently ready to be adapted to other research protocols and different clinical conditions. In the medium term, the team aims to bring this technology into the clinical trial setting, exploring the potential of continuously collected at-home data to enable more sensitive assessment of the effects of new treatments.

An important step forward in digital health research and in developing new ways to monitor the progression of ALS.

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