February 26, 2007
The CDC Joins The Virtual World
There is a Virtual Worlds Conference in New York March 28-29, 2007. Unexpected featured speakers at this event include 2 faculty from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One would expect speakers from IBM, Disney, MTV and other media companies, but the CDC?
Apparently, the CDC has joined the virtual world by building a virtual headquarters on two popular Web-based virtual worlds in an effort to inform people about health issues. Since last fall, the CDC has had an outpost in the virtual world called Second Life and also collaborated with a virtual world, called Whyville, where it conducted a campaign for children's avatars to be vaccinated against the "Why-Flu." CDC officials said exploring health education via virtual worlds is simply another strategy to publicize information.
Other government agencies who have invested in landscape in Second Life are the The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) and NASA.
February 20, 2007
Hospital WiFi
Several stories in the news this week about the use of WiFi in hospitals.
The Tucson city government is creating a medical and first responder network by connecting hospitals with the paramedics in ambulances. A paramedic can use voice, video and data to communicate with a trauma doctor in the hospital emergency room, so she can assist the patient during the critical minutes before the ambulance gets to the ER door.
Tucson already had the network infrastructure in place; it was a side effect of the city upgrading its traffic lights. So, while only four ambulances are equipped so far, the 205 node radios will eventually expand to 419 traffic signals in the city of 225 square miles. The project will also expand to connect the medical system with police and fire departments, to the water management system (for well-monitoring data) and to building inspectors.
Another Arizona project called the the Amado Wi-Fi project aims to treat and educate people with diabetes. This network is built in rural areas, such as Amado, 40 miles south of Tucson, and Tuba City, on the Navajo reservation in the state’s northeast. One way this was made possible was that the Arizona Telecommunications & Information Council had "lit up" the Interstate corridor between Tucson and the Mexican border as part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) emergency response system. Using a mobile exam room with Wi-Fi capability, patients can speak with doctors, and have a retinal scan transmitted to a Tucson hospital to check for a diabetes-related eye disease.
Source: CIO Tech Informer
WiFi Solves Cell Dropouts
Physicians at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center prompted their IT staff to launch a new pilot project of dual-mode phone technology. If the project works as expected, hospital staffers will be able to keep the same caller on the line with the same handset as they walk from a car outside into an examination room. The call itself is designed to move seamlessly from a cellular network to the hospital's extensive Wi-Fi network.
The project started in a serendipitous way, when a couple of physicians wanted to use their cell phones outside and walk into the building where there are normally dead zones without dropping the call. Some of the hospitals at UCSF have numerous dead cellular zones, because some of the buildings are 16 stories tall with steel bracing to prevent earthquake damage and lead-lined walls to contain radiation.
UCSF has a large Wi-Fi network with 800 access points providing internal coverage virtually everywhere.
Source: Computerworld
Electronic Wrist Bands
In the UK, hospital patients are wearing wristbands that have gone high-tech. Patients in Birmingham Heartlands Hospital carry their personal data on electronic tags embedded into wristbands. On arrival, they have a digital photo taken and that, plus the details of the care they need, are loaded on to an electronic tag contained in a wristband they can wear throughout their stay. The tags mean any member of staff caring for that patient can read the tag details using a PDA to check they are treating the right person.
They can also see what checks the patient has had, or if they are ready for surgery, to ensure they get the right drugs, tests and operations via the checklist on the PDA.
A number of projects such as this, which tag patients, and bar-coding drugs and hospital equipment, are being seen in a number of UK hospitals but the Department of Health is now recommending such technology is more widely used. The health minister pointed out that ‘there is evidence of real improvements to patient safety when coding systems are used to match patients to their care - fewer medication errors, a reduced risk of wrong-site surgery, a more accurate track and trace of surgical instruments, equipment and other devices, and much better record-keeping.’
Source: BBC
WiFi for patients and family
University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital provide patients with an entertainment and education system, including a 42-inch LCD television in each patient room. Patients can also surf the Internet, get e-mail, view educational content, download movies and play games right from their beds.
Patients and visitors also are given free, secure wireless Internet access, as long as they bring their own laptops. All material is filtered for children.
This spring, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare (EHN) will begin installing a new Wi-Fi system that gives patients Internet access in their room and throughout the hospital. Similar online access will be available in other area hospitals. At ENH, there's no more waiting by the phone or mailbox for test results. Patients can log on wherever they are with ENHfirst.org, a free patient-information portal that allows them to view lab, X-ray and EKG results; e-mail their doctor; schedule appointments; renew medications; even pay hospital and physician bills.
Patients sign up with their doctor for this secure portal. A password allows them access to information while protecting hospital and patient records. If information is posted to
Source: Chicago Tribune
February 09, 2007
Virtual Iraq, Real Treatment
According to a report in the LA Times, soldiers returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder are being treated through computerized virtual reality systems.
The sounds and images of war are being fed into a special helmet, goggles and earphones. The program was developed in part by gaming engineers and psychologists at USC and being tested, among other places, at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.
Universities, private firms and the federal government are pouring millions of dollars into creating and testing such virtual Iraqs to help ease the psychological disorder that, according to a 2004 study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, affects more than 15% of combat personnel returning from Iraq.
With a therapist's supervision, the virtual Iraqs are designed to vividly, yet safely, allow those veterans to confront war experiences in ways that go beyond traditional counseling and drug therapy. The computer programs, even with the somewhat cartoonish digital depictions of combat, seek to relieve trauma by repeatedly revisiting its origins.
Virtual reality treatment is still being explored as a viable treatment, however, according to the researchers, the early results are promising.
February 05, 2007
101 Things To Do With A Mobile Phone In Healthcare
Many of today's eHealth companies are run by clinicians with first hand experience of clinical processes. Sophisticated companies such as these will accelerate the adoption of wireless ehealth by giving credibility to ehealth as a technology and providing reference sites within the healthcare sector itself.
According to "The Wireless Healthcare Report" in the not too distant future, the ehealth market will enter a new phase where clinicians themselves encourage the automation of clinical processes. This is happening as a new generation of ehealth products and services, based on wireless and mobile technology, is putting diagnosis and treatment management into the hands of the patient. Companies such as Card Guard and Vitaphone are offering suites of wireless ehealth applications - which include blood pressure, heart rate and blood glucose monitoring - to patients, with or without the support of a conventional healthcare provider.
This report describes 101 examples of the use of wireless and mobile technology in healthcare. While some of the applications are speculative, others, such as SMS based patient reminders, have already been deployed and are earning revenue for vendors.
Appointment Reminders (SMS)
Patient Support (SMS)
Medication Reminders (SMS)
Appointment Booking
Medical Data On SIM Card
Patient Information For Relatives
Peer Support For Patients
Post Cardiac Surgery Support
Accessing Patient Records
Access To Dietary Information
Review all 100 uses at Wireless Health Care Report (pdf)
February 01, 2007
The Latest in Technology - Paper
Paper? Yes, paper. Researchers at Harvard have developed a diagnostic paper that employs millimeter-sized channels to quickly, cheaply, and accurately perform multiple biological tests.
Testing biological fluids such as blood and urine is essential for both diagnostics and routine checks. In remote, non-industrialized regions or for emergency on-the-spot diagnosis, current methods of laboratory analysis are far too complicated. A team at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts have now developed a prototype for a new class of inexpensive, highly practical rapid tests that can be used to carry out several biological tests simultaneously on a single drop. As they describe in the journal Angewandte Chemie, their tests are based on tiny pieces of paper onto which defined, millimeter-sized channels are printed.
To produce these, highly absorbent paper is treated with a photosensitive coating and covered with a mask that is the negative of the desired pattern. When the paper is irradiated with UV light through the mask, the molecules of the photosensitive coating change so that subsequent heating converts them to a continuous polymer layer. The untreated coating under the mask can be washed away, while the polymer layer on the irradiated spots is bound fast to the paper. This system allows the researchers to produce a tiny system of channels separated from each other by "channel walls" made of the water-repellent polymer.
As a prototype, researchers selected a clover-leaf-shaped channel system: A main channel branches into three tiny chambers. Different color reagents are introduced into each of these chambers and are allowed to dry. The first chamber contains a reagent for a glucose test and the second a protein test; the third is a control. When a drop of liquid is introduced, the capillary action of the paper quickly sucks it up and transports it into all three chambers. A series of tests with artificial urine demonstrated that the intensity of the (simultaneously occurring) color reactions corresponds to the glucose and protein concentrations. The sensitivity of detection is comparable to conventional glucose and protein test strips.
Crucial to implementation in the field, the tests are not affected by contamination by dust, dirt, or plant materials, because these particles are not absorbed by the paper.