University of Arizona Core Facilities Highlights: The Digital Health Technology and Sensors
A room can become a virtual hospital. A wearable sensor can reveal how an athlete recovers from a strenuous workout. And a portable health station could bring telehealth services to people in remote areas of Arizona.
Jennifer Barton in the DHTS main room, equipped with sensors, cameras, and green screen capabilities, used for the StellarScape program.
Qusai Almustafa, University of Arizona
At the University of Arizona Digital Health Technology and Sensor Core, or DHTS, researchers across disciplines can turn ideas like these into studies using specialized spaces, sensors, virtual and extended reality tools, mobile health technologies and advanced data analysis.
Shravan Aras, DHTS manager standing with Cruzr the robot.
Taylor Edwards, University of Arizona
“From the humanities and the arts to nursing, medicine, bioengineering, physiology and even athletics, we’ve assisted researchers across campus and across disciplines,” said Shravan Aras, DHTS manager and assistant research professor in the School of Health Professions, part of the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health.
Founded as the SensorLab in early 2022, the facility has two full-time employees in addition to Aras, who manages the facility through a part-time appointment. Along with DHTS research technologists Qusai Almustafa and Duo Bao, Aras helps investigators navigate the entire research lifecycle, from selecting equipment, hardware and software selection to configuring research spaces, developing data collection strategies and consulting on advanced analytics. The core also employs undergraduate students and summer interns from biomedical engineering, computer science and other programs, giving them hands-on experience with sensor-based research projects.
“Our goal is to create an environment that fosters creativity and innovation and that brings together students, faculty, industry and community partners to advance human-centered hardware and software sensor systems, including AI, VR, mobile apps, and Extended Reality (XR), and to use them in novel ways to help researchers and advance science,” Aras said.
DHTS’s main space is an empty room, customizable for each research study needs and equipped with overhead motion capture sensors, flexible lighting options and plenty of room in which to move people, robots or even conduct educational programs for students. Co-located with the U of A Holodeck Lab, a National Science Foundation project, the space is a virtual/physical research environment designed to accelerate the convergence of science and innovation.
The CoDiRA remote health sensing station.
Taylor Edwards, University of Arizona
Early in the core’s history, the space was used to facilitate StellarScape, an immersive multimedia program in which dancers wore multiple sensors that fed their choreographed movements into a system that recorded their kinesthetic signals. Those signals became part of a larger performance involving live musicians, dancers, electronic music, acoustic sensing and interactive cinematography.
Interactivity and feedback are key advantages to using wearable sensor data for many research projects. In the health sciences, for example, DHTS worked with researchers in the School of Global Health Sensor Lab on a virtual reality patient simulation project. DHTS also collaborated with Janine Hinton, associate clinical professor in the School of Nursing to configure an “intelligence simulation environment” to help train student nurses.
“We developed a mixed-reality-based ecosystem in one of our DHTS rooms, complete with a mannequin in a hospital bed surrounded by patient monitoring equipment,” Aras said, describing the nurse training scenario supported by SensorLab Seed Grants.
Humanities experts helped develop virtual reality scenarios in which readings on patient-monitoring equipment would change. Hinton’s research team also added a conversational AI capability to the mannequin, while nursing students wore Empatica sensors that measured physiological stress. Hinton and her team continue the project using the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s Arizona Simulation Technology and Education Center (ASTEC) facilities and through collaborations with Purdue University.
“The project was exciting for everyone because it involved different disciplines, lots of different equipment, and enabled the future nurses to understand the physiology and the impact of their reactions to changing situations.”
The DHTS-School Global Health Sensor Lab patient simulation room.
Qusai Almustafa, University of Arizona
In another health-related project funded by the U of A Big Idea Challenge and led by Dr. Srikar Adhikari, professor of emergency medicine, DHTS is assisting a multi-disciplinary team with a portable kiosk designed to expand telehealth beyond traditional boundaries. The Convergent Digital Health for Remote Access, or CoDiRA, kiosk is a wheelchair-accessible platform equipped with sensors that can take basic vital signs and can be placed in remote locations around the state. Embedded sensors allow a visitor to slide onto a seat that will register their weight, slip their arm into a sleeve that will take their blood pressure, and face a camera that can register facial and skin abnormalities. With two-way communications enabled, the kiosk will potentially be able to provide immediate feedback to patients for whom travel to a health care facility is prohibitive.
DHTS also has taken its sensors into university athletic training facilities to monitor athletes’ vital signs, systemic stress and recovery after strenuous workouts using Fitbit devices. The project was supported by a SensorLab Seed Grant.
“We spent six months in the training facilities and came out with good data on recovery. And we had fun,” Aras said, adding that he worked closely with Dr. John Konhilas, professor of physiology and Dr. Mark Sakr, sports medicine physician with Campus Health.
In addition to supporting faculty-led projects, DHTS provides opportunities for student interns to gain hands-on experience with the latest in sensor and monitoring equipment. Staff members also participate in community outreach, including work with public schools in the Tucson area. Students regularly visit the DHTS space, and the team has visited schools in Tucson, Vail and Sahuarita.