2,922 research outputs found
Physiology-Aware Rural Ambulance Routing
In emergency patient transport from rural medical facility to center tertiary
hospital, real-time monitoring of the patient in the ambulance by a physician
expert at the tertiary center is crucial. While telemetry healthcare services
using mobile networks may enable remote real-time monitoring of transported
patients, physiologic measures and tracking are at least as important and
requires the existence of high-fidelity communication coverage. However, the
wireless networks along the roads especially in rural areas can range from 4G
to low-speed 2G, some parts with communication breakage. From a patient care
perspective, transport during critical illness can make route selection patient
state dependent. Prompt decisions with the relative advantage of a longer more
secure bandwidth route versus a shorter, more rapid transport route but with
less secure bandwidth must be made. The trade-off between route selection and
the quality of wireless communication is an important optimization problem
which unfortunately has remained unaddressed by prior work.
In this paper, we propose a novel physiology-aware route scheduling approach
for emergency ambulance transport of rural patients with acute, high risk
diseases in need of continuous remote monitoring. We mathematically model the
problem into an NP-hard graph theory problem, and approximate a solution based
on a trade-off between communication coverage and shortest path. We profile
communication along two major routes in a large rural hospital settings in
Illinois, and use the traces to manifest the concept. Further, we design our
algorithms and run preliminary experiments for scalability analysis. We believe
that our scheduling techniques can become a compelling aid that enables an
always-connected remote monitoring system in emergency patient transfer
scenarios aimed to prevent morbidity and mortality with early diagnosis
treatment.Comment: 6 pages, The Fifth IEEE International Conference on Healthcare
Informatics (ICHI 2017), Park City, Utah, 201
Business Models for e-Health: Evidence from Ten Case Studies
An increasingly aging population and spiraling healthcare costs have made the
search for financially viable healthcare models an imperative of this century.
The careful and creative application of information technology can play a
significant role in meeting that challenge. Valuable lessons can be learned
from an analysis of ten innovative telemedicine and e-health initiatives.
Having proven their effectiveness in addressing a variety of medical needs,
they have progressed beyond small-scale implementations to become an
established part of healthcare delivery systems around the world
Casualty evacuation in Korea, 1950-53: the British experience
The Korean War was the first conflict in which helicopters were used extensively for casualty evacuation but their contribution to medical evacuation at that time is disputed. On the one hand, many cases undoubtedly survived because of helicopter transportation; on the other, the proportion of casualties evacuated appears to have been small and difficult to determine precisely. Taking the British army as a case study, this article looks more closely at arrangements for casualty evacuation in Korea, assessing the role of helicopters in relation to other elements of the evacuation system and its operation as a whole.
The article is divided into several sections. The first examines the command structure of the medical system in Korea, which extended as far back as hospitals in Japan. It shows how medical support for British forces was closely integrated with that of other Commonwealth forces. It notes that rapid and effective integration was a major factor in the success of medical evacuation because it allowed ideas and equipment to be shared easily and because it fostered a spirit of cooperation. This section also highlights the Second World service of all senior Commonwealth medical officers as a factor conducive to integration. The second section provides an overview of the chain of evacuation from the frontline to hospitals in Japan. It describes the functions of the different medical institutions along the chain and how they were connected. Among other things, it shows how the chain for British and Commonwealth troops intersected with medical units of the United States such as Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals and hospital trains. In the third section of the article, there is a detail examination of evacuation by helicopter, describing how it was arranged, what its limitations were, and what types of casualty were evacuated. It estimates the proportion of casualties that were evacuated by this means. The fourth and fifth sections highlight the importance of command decisions in the effective working of the evacuation system. The fourth concentrates on the evolution of a system of forward treatment of minor cases, looking at the challenge posed by disease and other non-battle casualties. The fifth and final section of the article describes how the system of evacuation functioned as a whole, including the different means used to carry the sick and wounded in addition to helicopters. It stresses the importance of coordination between these different elements and places particular emphasis on the value of wireless communications.
The article concludes that the success of casualty evacuation in Korea depended less on any single method of transportation than on effective command and control. In this respect, communication between constituent units of the evacuation chain and cooperation between British and other UN forces was crucial. Of equal and perhaps even greater importance was the decision to implement a policy of forward treatment of sickness and minor injuries. Without such a policy, the lines of evacuation would inevitably have become congested, having a detrimental effect on casualty survival rates. This policy drew on the lessons of the two world wars which were still relatively fresh in the minds of medical commanders. Although far less striking than the advent of the helicopter, prior knowledge of coalition warfare and the handling of mass casualties was crucial to medical success. If there is a lesson to be learned from the Korean War for own times, it is probably this
Wearable feedback systems for rehabilitation
In this paper we describe LiveNet, a flexible wearable platform intended for long-term ambulatory health monitoring with real-time data streaming and context classification. Based on the MIT Wearable Computing Group's distributed mobile system architecture, LiveNet is a stable, accessible system that combines inexpensive, commodity hardware; a flexible sensor/peripheral interconnection bus; and a powerful, light-weight distributed sensing, classification, and inter-process communications software architecture to facilitate the development of distributed real-time multi-modal and context-aware applications. LiveNet is able to continuously monitor a wide range of physiological signals together with the user's activity and context, to develop a personalized, data-rich health profile of a user over time. We demonstrate the power and functionality of this platform by describing a number of health monitoring applications using the LiveNet system in a variety of clinical studies that are underway. Initial evaluations of these pilot experiments demonstrate the potential of using the LiveNet system for real-world applications in rehabilitation medicine
Architecture and Design of Medical Processor Units for Medical Networks
This paper introduces analogical and deductive methodologies for the design
medical processor units (MPUs). From the study of evolution of numerous earlier
processors, we derive the basis for the architecture of MPUs. These specialized
processors perform unique medical functions encoded as medical operational
codes (mopcs). From a pragmatic perspective, MPUs function very close to CPUs.
Both processors have unique operation codes that command the hardware to
perform a distinct chain of subprocesses upon operands and generate a specific
result unique to the opcode and the operand(s). In medical environments, MPU
decodes the mopcs and executes a series of medical sub-processes and sends out
secondary commands to the medical machine. Whereas operands in a typical
computer system are numerical and logical entities, the operands in medical
machine are objects such as such as patients, blood samples, tissues, operating
rooms, medical staff, medical bills, patient payments, etc. We follow the
functional overlap between the two processes and evolve the design of medical
computer systems and networks.Comment: 17 page
Health Technology Scenarios and Implications for Spectrum
Supporting Informatio
Considerations of Telemedicine in the Delivery of Modern Healthcare
Telecommunication technologies have made telemedicine a modern health delivery system. Telemedicine enhances home telehealth services as specialty care, patient consultations, remote patient monitoring, and medical education without the patients having to leave their homes. Urban medical centers have used telemedicine to expand access to specialist services by centralizing health care providers to assist patients seen by their primary care providers. This paper provides a brief history of telemedicine; explains how telemedicine works; covers a few cases of telemedicine implementation, identifies lessons learned, discusses some current issues of telemedicine, and concludes with some limitations of telemedicine
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