A foreign organisation will use for the first time a technology developed in Qatar with the Rome City Council (RCC) signing a deal to deploy the RASAD remote data monitoring platform, a product of Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP).

Rome’s Minister for Technology and IT Networks, Enrico Cavallari, and QSTP executive chairman Dr Tidu Maini signed the agreement at QSTP yesterday to use RASAD for an epidemiological study in the City of Rome.

The collaboration will cover monitoring children’s lifestyles as a tool to prevent chronic metabolic diseases, including obesity, hypertension and diabetes. Cardiac, diabetes and Alzheimer’s patients will also be monitored.

RASAD can integrate a variety of sensors that collect data accurately and transmit it in real time using wireless technology to MEEZA’s Cloud Computing Centre at QSTP.

“This has not been done anywhere else in the world on a uniform platform,” Dr Maini said while explaining that the secret was to find a way to gather data (from a number of users) and transmit it in real time.

Using RASAD to monitor physical activity or patients’ heart behaviour will help the health authorities of the Rome City Council to prevent diseases, to make treatments more effective and to define new health policies, he observed.

Minister Cavallari described the initiative as a concrete step towards personalised medicine and expressed hope that the findings would help define new guiding principles in the healthcare system.

Pointing out that Rome is a city of 3mn residents, 300,000 small and medium enterprises, and attracts 10mn tourists a year as the third most visited city in Europe, he stated that improving living conditions was a top priority.

MEEZA chairman and Qatar Foundation vice president of administration, Rashid al-Naimi described the agreement as a landmark.

QSTP’s health sciences research manager Dr Aisha al-Obaidly said the data collected and processed from RASAD would be analysed by the University Rome la Sapienza, Faculty of Medicine and Hospital Sant Andrea and the outcome of these epidemiological studies would help develop better control and means of prevention against the relevant diseases.

Highlighting the need for prevention of heart disease, Rome’s Cardiology Centre chairman Prof Luciano De Biase pointed out that cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) were the cause of 40-45% morbidity and mortality in Europe.

“As many as 25% of adolescents are overweight and 15% of these are obese,” he said while stressing that the collaboration with QSTP would give RCC an opportunity for the direct measurement of the risk factors of CVDs.

City of Rome’s chief information officer Emilio Frezza hinted that the project would eventually cover the 26,000 employees of the Municipality of Rome.

QSTP’s strategic research director Dr Lucio Rispo explained that 770 school children were to be monitored under the project for data about their energy expenditure and vital signs.

“The RASAD platform will also be used to monitor the health of elderly people under home care, and eventually to study the level of stress and fatigue in the employees of Municipality of Rome,” he said.

Dr Maini pointed out that RASAD, developed over two years, had successfully demonstrated its efficiency on a number of proof of concept projects.

A preliminary study in Doha covered 500 children over 30 days, and trials with LCR Honda to record and analyse the vital signs of MotoGP riders.

The trials involved real-time data collection from bikers during high-speed rides and monitoring them simultaneously at Monte Carlo, Doha and Tokyo.

“We are in early discussions with Qatar’s Supreme Council of Health, working with Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar’s diabetes group, and have started collaborations with Hamad Hospital and Al Ahli hospitals for deploying RASAD,” Dr Maini said.

QSTP’s partners, Microsoft and Cisco, will be working on the RASAD platform which is already serving a range of industries, including healthcare, sport and lifestyle, and occupational safety and health among others.

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