The digital health space refers to the integration of technology and health care services to improve the overall quality of health care delivery. It encompasses a wide range of innovative and emerging technologies such as wearables, telehealth, artificial intelligence, mobile health, and electronic health records (EHRs). The digital health space offers numerous benefits such as improved patient outcomes, increased access to health care, reduced costs, and improved communication and collaboration between patients and health care providers. For example, patients can now monitor their vital signs such as blood pressure and glucose levels from home using wearable devices and share the data with their doctors in real-time. Telehealth technology allows patients to consult with their health care providers remotely without having to travel to the hospital, making health care more accessible, particularly in remote or rural areas. Artificial intelligence can be used to analyze vast amounts of patient data to identify patterns, predict outcomes, and provide personalized treatment recommendations. Overall, the digital health space is rapidly evolving, and the integration of technology in health

Friday, May 24, 2013

How a Physician’s Smartphone Camera might save Lives | Mobihealthnews

 

As mobile technology develops, and wireless cell phone data rates increase the use of a smartphone camera with adequate resolution can become a useful source of information which requires no additional, nor specialized services to be utilized in a medical situation.

For instance the use of an electrocardiogram  for remote monitoring would ordinarily require a specialized EKG machine and a specialized data link.

 

A team of doctors at the University of Virginia medical center has developed an app to more easily, quickly, and efficiently transmit electrocardiogram tracings from heart attack patients to doctors, enabling doctors to diagnose a particular kind of heart attack that can benefit from immediate treatment.

Most of the existing commercial systems, where the EKG hooks up to a modem to send readings to a hospital computer, are expensive and time consuming.

On the other hand, just snapping a photo with a mobile phone’s camera is not always high enough quality to be helpful, and can also take a long time.

STEMISend uses the phone camera but compresses the file size as much as possible while still maintaining a diagnostic-quality image. The development of 4G and LTE on the cell phone network may obviate compressing the images. 4G and LTE adequately carry video and imaging with HD resolution. (720p or 1080p.

   Faster than my home desktop on wifi

They tested the app more than 1,500 times via Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless networks, with three or more bars of cellular service. Burt and his team have been doing preliminary field testing on the app, taking pictures at various locations near UVA’s campus where heart attacks often occur, like local grocery stores.

The system can remain HIPAA compliant even though the pictures are sent through unsecure cellular networks in the same way that radio conversations with emergency response workers comply with HIPAA: by eliminating patient identifiers. The EKG images are sent without images or names of the patients.

Burt says the goal is to make this remain a low-cost option for hospitals that can’t afford to invest in expensive commercial systems:

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