Telemedicine, today more than ever. The ABBRACCI design concept for COVID-19 patient monitoring

During the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining physical distance has been essential to safeguarding public health and saving lives. As a result, remotely monitoring infected patients— both in hospitals and at home —has become vital. Telemedicine plays a key role in ensuring healthcare assistance while minimizing human-to-human exposure and the spread of the virus. Evidence suggests that during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, COVID-19 spread significantly in hospitals, nursing homes, senior living communities, and, more generally, among healthcare workers and patients. Today, more than ever, technological solutions that enable remote healthcare are needed to mitigate infections among healthcare personnel and patients. This raises a crucial question: How can design contribute to helping healthcare workers operate with minimal contact with COVID-19 patients while ensuring both safety and effective care? At the same time, how can it provide hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients with a sense of being monitored and supported? To address this challenge, European institutions and research centers —including Unimore, RE:Lab, Università Iuav di Venezia, Fondazione Democenter-SIPE, Pannon Business Network Nonprofit KFT, August Pi Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS), and Humatects GmbH — have combined their expertise to develop a design concept: ABBRACCI, an AI-based smart wearable device for COVID-19 patient monitoring and care. Looking ahead, this innovation could also respond to future health threats and emergency situations. In this paper, we present ABBRACCI, a multidisciplinary design solution intended to monitor the health and well-being of people diagnosed with COVID-19. It is designed for both critically ill hospitalized patients and non-severe cases confined at home, as well as individuals at high risk of infection due to chronic diseases and multimorbidity.