IMPALA: An Innovative Monitoring system for PAediatrics in Low-resource settings: an Aid to save lives.

More than 3 million children in low-resource settings (LRS) die annually due to contextual constraints in healthcare systems that hamper the widespread supply of high-quality healthcare. Many of these deaths are advanced stages of poverty-related diseases that are recognised too late to be treated effectively while treatment usually is available.

In the hospital, monitoring of children's vital signs is essential for early detection of critical illness, which can save lives. Shortage of (qualified) staff and lack of suitable equipment are the main bottlenecks to monitor these children adequately during admission. Current monitoring systems widely used in high-resource settings are not suitable for LRS due to their high costs and poor compatibility with LRS settings.

The IMPALA project will address these problems by developing an affordable, durable, and user-friendly monitoring system (IMPALA) for hospitalised children in LRS. By combining innovative sensors, machine learning algorithms and point-of-care biomarkers we aim to create a smart, yet simple, monitoring system that enables health workers to timely detect and predict critical illness. At the end of this project we aim to have a fully functional monitoring system that will be ready to be tested in clinical settings.