Streaming Wearables and Stress measurement Platform (SWSP)

Project description

The goal of this project is to create a software platform which can be used to process streaming stress data from wearables and visualize this data. The aspects of the project we worked on consists of the following components:

FRONTEND
- A dashboard for organization administrators where they can manage patient groups (for example a dementia department) and manage patients and caregivers that are in their organization.
- A dashboard for caregivers where they can see visualized stress data in graphs for patients that are in their patient groups.
- A technical health dashboard that can be used by the administrator of the platform to gain insight into the health of the system (for example viewing warnings and logs from all the various services).

BACKEND
- Services that take in data from the wearable sensors, normalize it, process it using a stress algorithm (currently a Heart Rate Variability(HRV) formula) and then store it, after which it can be retrieved by the caregiver dashboard to visualize the stress data.
- Services that manage patients, patient groups, user accounts etc.
- A service that collect technical health information from the system.

In the future, an app that can be used by consumers will also be a part of the platform. That app will allow users to view stress data for a connected patient, for example to be used by a relative that wants to gain insight into their family member's stress levels if they can't communicate it themselves.

Context

Stress-related complaints have a major impact on people's health. In particular, prolonged or intense stress can lead to physical and psychological health problems. It affects the quality of life and contributes to high social costs (such as healthcare costs and costs due to absenteeism). Good stress management contributes to reducing these complaints. Stress affects a person's heart activity, sweating and skin temperature. These changes can be measured by wearables (a watch, smart sock, chest strap), that can be used as an 'early warning system', identification, insight and evaluation of stressors. Thus, there is a need for an application that uses these stress measurements, processes them in real time and can provide insight for organizations of caregivers.

Results

A foundation for the platform was built over the course of the semester that can be used by the product owners to get an idea of what a final product might look like.
This foundation has multiple frontends that use data from the multitude of services running in the background that are all able to communicate.
The architecture we designed for the platform has evolved slightly since our initial setup of the project, and this new architecture will be useful for further development of the platform as it is proven to work with the functionality that is required for the project.

About the project group

The project was developed by a class of 17 students that were divided into 3 teams but all worked together. The large amount of students from all kinds of different previous experience made it so there was always someone with knowledge about a topic that could be shared with the rest.

To keep the development process manageable, the teams held their own sprint plannings, standups etc., but had the team leaders get together multiple times a week to keep up to date about everyone's progress and make necessary agreements.

A sprint review was held every 3 weeks, but in the other weeks meetings were still organized with the product owners to ensure they were happy with the direction in which we were taking the project.