Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA) group appears at recent IES meeting

April 7, 2016 - CHTM

LESA - Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications

The Albuquerque Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) held its regular meeting on Wednesday, April 6th, and the presenters for the meeting were the team behind the recent installation of a "Smart Lighting" testbed in an inpatient room at UNM Hospital. Dr. Steven H. Brueck, UNM Lead for the Smart Lighting Engineering Research Center (ERC), emeritus director of CHTM, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus with Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at UNM, described the ERC program, (which has been rebranded as Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications [LESA]). Meeko Oishi, Associate Professor with ECE at UNM, explained the lighting controls and biometric feedback. Professor Lee Brown, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics and Director of the UNM Sleep Disorders Center, covered the exciting medical applications made possible by the immersive, customizable lighting environment in a hospital inpatient setting.

As part of the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded LESA program through the ERC, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and UNM collaborated to install the flexible, full color gamut LED lighting system in the hospital room. The lighting system features color and time-of-flight sensors for occupancy and task determination and feedback control of the lights, and is compatible with ubiquitous sensing devices. The LED troffers are remotely-configurable microprocessor-controlled 5 color fixtures (blue, green, amber, red and white).

To the group’s knowledge, this is the first such immersive, fully controllable lighting system in a clinical setting. The smart-lighting equipped hospital room will enable side-by-side controlled studies about how LED lighting impacts human health. Initial medical studies are planned on the impact of controlled lighting on the human sleep-wake phase by varying the red / blue ratio on a 24 hour cycle to entrain circadian rhythms. Many other studies on the impacts of high quality, color-tunable lighting on healing and medical treatment are planned.

Thanks to Stefi Weisburd for the photo and information on the meeting!
Read the January press release on the RPI-UNM Lighting Testbed in Hospital Inpatient Setting

LESA group reunites at IES meeting

l-r: Billy Tubb, President, IES Albuquerque, Technical Director, Popejoy Hall, UNM Public Events; Dr. Lee Brown, Director, UNM Sleep Disorders Center; Steven R. H. Brueck, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, ECE, UNM; Meeko Oishi, Associate Professor, ECE, UNM; and David Penasa, Facilities Engineer & Manager, UNM PPD Engineering

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