Faculty members participate in research project on the use of the Internet of Things (IoT) for Environmental monitoring and Health analytics

Thursday, 06 June 2019

The Medical School is participating in a new research project titled ‘IoT based Continuous Environmental Monitoring for Health Analytics (Snow-IoT)’.  The project received a 200,000 Euros grant from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation under the Research in Enterprises (ENTERPRISES/0618) call. The project consortium consists of Cyprus Research and Innovation Service (CyRIC) as the project host organisation, and UNIC Medical School and Ygia Polyclinic as the project partners.  The duration of the research programme is two years, from June 2019 to May 2021.

The UNIC team is led by the Dean of the Medical School Professor Andreas Charalambous, who initiated the idea for the project.  Other Medical School faculty involved in the project in alphabetical order, are: Dr Chloe Antoniou, Professor Photos Hajigeorgiou, Dr Alexandros Heraclides, Dr Ourania Kolokotroni, and Dr Nicoletta Nicolaou.

Snow-IoT aims to research the applicability of Internet of Things enabled continuous environmental monitoring for better health care and better design of urban environments. The project plans to investigate methods of providing the general public with continuous awareness of the environmental dangers, regarding health and sustainable living, related to their environment. Snow-IoT will utilise data from IoT sensors, as well as aggregated statistics from healthcare providers, in order to better plan IoT sensor installation, and to provide analytics and insights into the environmental conditions and research causality models that can be derived by the data correlations observed.

Two main IoT networks covering the Larnaca and Limassol Bay regions will be established during the project. Continuous environmental monitoring will include very specific air and water sensors, which will allow longitudinal and continuous monitoring of air and water quality. The data from these sensors, together with relevant regional health data, will be combined to investigate the potential impact of environmental factors on public health in these areas. The results of the project will become available through an enhanced insights platform providing additional data to health care providers, as well as continuously analysing risks and offering awareness to the general public.