Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a commonly encountered medical problem that is associated with poor health outcomes in survivors, including increased mortality and re-admission to the hospital. Despite their high-risk status, only a small fraction (<10%) of patients receive specialized nephrologist follow-up after AKI episode. The low rate of follow-up care is due to lack of clear guidelines as well as reluctance on part of patients due to several reasons such as hospital fatigue, long travel times and unwillingness to add more doctors to the care team. To address the gap in care for AKI survivors, we propose an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled, MUlti-modal SEnsor (MUSE) platform for at-home use that can monitor patient health automatically, perform risk assessment for AKI recurrence, and alert the patient to seek specialized care. MUSE comprises of – 1) a colorimetric dipstick for capturing concentration of bio-markers (creatinine, urea, pH and lactate) in urine; 2) a near-field communication (NFC) powered stretchable, battery-less, single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) skin patch that records ECG since cardiovascular complications is a strong predictor for AKI recurrence; 3) an AI-enabled mobile application that acquires sensor data (from urine sample and ECG) and runs an on-device deep learning fusion AI model to combine sensor data and patient medical record (past co-morbidities and demographics) for precision and personalized predictions. We will harness capabilities of smartphone for several key tasks - a) capture images of the dipstick sensor with built-in camera; b) act as NFC reader for ECG patch; c) run the computer vision and AI algorithms natively on-board without requiring network connection, and encrypt patient data locally. The AI model will be trained and validated on a large retrospective dataset collected from patients at Mayo Clinic Hospital, and the sensor system functionality will be validated with an observational study on 20 adult participants (10 healthy and 10 AKI patients) at Mayo. The proposed research has the potential to drive innovations in producing the next generation of intelligent wearables that performs fusion of multi-modal sensor data and EMR for early detection of underlying health issues with high accuracy. A successful realization of the proposal aims will pave the way for a future, large-scale clinical trial with our sensor platform.

Our proposed research is highly relevant to NIBIB mission to transform through engineering the understanding of disease and its prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment. Our research goal is to develop AI-enabled MUSE technology for at-home health monitoring of AKI patients through fusion of urine biomarkers, ECG and EMR. Our research aligns perfectly with Goals 2 and 4 of NIBIB Strategic Vision by making healthcare more accessible to all through development of point-of-care wireless and personal health informatics technology. Our work will lead to new insights into health management of AKI patients.