Smart hospital conceptualisations by experts in teams

Objective – The concept of Smart hospitals looks to future hospitals as infrastructures for effective and efficient clinical processes as well as infrastructures for supportive social interactions between patients and health professionals with the objective to design places that increase health service quality, productivity and patient's positive experience. This requires teams of experts that bring in knowledge from different disciplines like medicine and healthcare sciences, Information and Communication Technology, Social Sciences and Architecture. Background - One of the biggest challenges in healthcare is the rising demand for services, while there is a decrease in workforce due to an aging society. Given the current budget constraints, healthcare systems are therefore under pressure to provide cost effectively high-quality services which requires fundamental reforms. When healthcare process data becomes more detailed and accurate, leveraging the concept of smart hospitals could contribute to better use of healthcare resources, including the hospital buildings. Research question - What is a smart hospital? How can various disciplines contribute to smart hospitals? How will healthcare processes change by applying smart technologies? Methodology – 5 interdisciplinary student groups of in total 28 students (12 medicine, 5 economy, 5 social sciences and 6 Technology) explored the concepts for future Smart Hospitals during a 4-week intensive course in Experts in Team. The projects included 3 phases: (1) conceptualisation; (2) writing an article based on literature research and; (3) integrating the findings in a proposal for a product. Results - The 5 projects reflect the students’ research on the application of smart technologies in future hospitals, ranging from: (1) the use of drones for acute healthcare: (2) application of artificial intelligence for improving diagnosis; (3) use of Building Information Models to optimise use of healthcare resources; (4) reducing hospital acquired infections by tracking flow of objects and people and; (5) home delivery of diagnostic services to reduce number of patients in the hospital. Conclusion - The link between healthcare services and the physical environment has the potential to be re-invented through digitalisation and analytics of hospital process data leading to predictability and reduction of variation to support decision making. This requires cross-cutting solutions from healthcare management, logistic management and facility management in combination with ICT and social sciences.publishedVersio

IDEA SYSTEMU TOMOGRAFII ELEKTRYCZNEJ DO MONITOROWANIU WENTYLACJI PŁUC

In many applications of electrical tomography, such as monitoring the lungs of unconscious intensive care patients, data acquisition on the entire boundary of the body is impractical. The boundary area available for electrical tomography measurements is restricted. Physiological processes that produce changes in the electrical conductivity of the body can be monitored by hybrid algorithms. This paper presents the architecture of the system based on electrical tomography.W wielu zastosowaniach tomografii elektrycznej, takich jak monitorowanie płuc pacjentów podlegających intensywnej opiece medycznej, zbieranie danych na całej powierzchni ciała jest niepraktyczne. Dostępne obszary dla pomiarów tomografii elektrycznej są ograniczane. Procesy fizjologiczne, które wywołują zmiany w przewodnictwie elektrycznym w organizmie mogą być monitorowane za pomocą algorytmów hybrydowych. W artykule przedstawiono architekturę systemu opartego na tomografii elektrycznej

How 5G wireless (and concomitant technologies) will revolutionize healthcare?

The need to have equitable access to quality healthcare is enshrined in the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which defines the developmental agenda of the UN for the next 15 years. In particular, the third SDG focuses on the need to “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages”. In this paper, we build the case that 5G wireless technology, along with concomitant emerging technologies (such as IoT, big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning), will transform global healthcare systems in the near future. Our optimism around 5G-enabled healthcare stems from a confluence of significant technical pushes that are already at play: apart from the availability of high-throughput low-latency wireless connectivity, other significant factors include the democratization of computing through cloud computing; the democratization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing (e.g., IBM Watson); and the commoditization of data through crowdsourcing and digital exhaust. These technologies together can finally crack a dysfunctional healthcare system that has largely been impervious to technological innovations. We highlight the persistent deficiencies of the current healthcare system and then demonstrate how the 5G-enabled healthcare revolution can fix these deficiencies. We also highlight open technical research challenges, and potential pitfalls, that may hinder the development of such a 5G-enabled health revolution

Distributed Network, Wireless and Cloud Computing Enabled 3-D Ultrasound; a New Medical Technology Paradigm

Medical technologies are indispensable to modern medicine. However, they have become exceedingly expensive and complex and are not available to the economically disadvantaged majority of the world population in underdeveloped as well as developed parts of the world. For example, according to the World Health Organization about two thirds of the world population does not have access to medical imaging. In this paper we introduce a new medical technology paradigm centered on wireless technology and cloud computing that was designed to overcome the problems of increasing health technology costs. We demonstrate the value of the concept with an example; the design of a wireless, distributed network and central (cloud) computing enabled three-dimensional (3-D) ultrasound system. Specifically, we demonstrate the feasibility of producing a 3-D high end ultrasound scan at a central computing facility using the raw data acquired at the remote patient site with an inexpensive low end ultrasound transducer designed for 2-D, through a mobile device and wireless connection link between them. Producing high-end 3D ultrasound images with simple low-end transducers reduces the cost of imaging by orders of magnitude. It also removes the requirement of having a highly trained imaging expert at the patient site, since the need for hand-eye coordination and the ability to reconstruct a 3-D mental image from 2-D scans, which is a necessity for high quality ultrasound imaging, is eliminated. This could enable relatively untrained medical workers in developing nations to administer imaging and a more accurate diagnosis, effectively saving the lives of people

The roadmap to healthcare digitalization: factors that affect the Portuguese approach to ehealth

Healthcare systems worldwide need to improve health outcomes while reducing costs. Increasing demand for chronic disease management, such as pulmonary disease, is driving digital transformation in healthcare. The Kata® inhalation app aims to improve patients' inhalation techniques through a data-based algorithm. This study aims to classify Portugal’s proneness to healthcare digitalization. Specifically, it investigates to which extent Portugal is lagging compared to digital pioneers and how it can keep up with advancements in a rapidly evolving technological world. The results suggest that Portugal is a positive example of eHealth but its main challenges are patients’ low digital trust and inoperability across infrastructures and health subsystems

FPGA technology in process tomography

The aims of this paper are to provide a review of the process tomography applications employing field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and to understand current FPGA related researches, in order to seek for the possibility to applied FPGA technology in an ultrasonic process tomography system. FPGA allows users to implement complete systems on a programmable chip, meanwhile, five main benefits of applying the FPGA technology are performance, time to market, cost, reliability, and long-term maintenance. These advantages definitely could help in the revolution of process tomography, especially for ultrasonic process tomography and electrical process tomography. Future work is focused on the ultrasonic process tomography for chemical process column investigation using FPGA for the aspects of low cost, high speed and reconstructed image quality

Bioimpedance and bone fracture detection: A state of the art

Bioimpedance measurements are used increasingly in health applications because bioelectric parameters have been associated with anatomical and physiological properties, thus enabling to distinguish medical conditions. For bone fracture diagnostics, nevertheless, there is no established non-invasive method. Ex vivo studies and In vivo bioimpedance procedures, both invasive and non-invasive, on mammalians long bones are associated with promising results. In this work, out of a total of 568 papers, we reviewd 59 articles that mention long bone integrity by electric properties, be it Bioimpedance Analysis, Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy or Electrical Impedance Tomography. The papers are described in three sections, "Ex vivo measurements", "In vivo invasive measurements" and "In vivo non-invasive measurements". This review allows to establish the basics to planning the development of new technology to detect bone fracture via bioimpedance measurements.Fil: Dell'osa, Antonio Héctor. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tierra del Fuego. Instituto de Desarrollo Economico E Innovacion; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología. Departamento de Bioingeniería. Laboratorio de Medios e Interfases; ArgentinaFil: Felice, Carmelo Jose. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología. Departamento de Bioingeniería. Laboratorio de Medios e Interfases; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Tecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Simini, Patricio. Universidad de la Republica. Facultad de Ingeniería; Urugua

A Review on Current eCall Systems for Autonomous Car Accident Detection

The aim of the paper is to give an overview on the existing eCall solutions for autonomous car accident detection. The requirements and expectations for such systems, considering both technological possibilities, legal regulatory criteria and market demands are discussed. Sensors utilized in e-call systems (crash sensing, systems for positional and velocity data, and communication solutions) are overviewed in the paper. Furthermore, the existing solutions for eCall devices are compared based on their level of autonomy, technical implementation and provided services

Report 2014. Fundació Bosch i Gimpera

Podeu consultar la versió en català a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/66825 i la versió en castellà a: http://hdl.handle.net/2445/11172