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'Fernando Morales pushed aside his walker and stepped into the Makoto Arena.
Three 6-foot tall steel posts surrounded Morales, 49, and Amanda Polizzi, his HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital of Erie physical therapy assistant.
A recorded voice counted down from four, then a series of red, blue and green lights flashed on the steel posts. Morales, who is recovering from knee-replacement surgery, had to slide his feet to touch the lights on each of the posts.
"I feel good. I have to get one of these for my son," Morales said after two 45-second sessions in the arena.'
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Andrew Spong shared this post on Facebook. (September 5, 2011 9:34 AM) |
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Andrew Spong shared this post on Twitter. (September 5, 2011 9:34 AM) |
Patient
Leigh Alexander writes:
'Long gone are the days when the idea of "games for health" meant exergaming. The mobile and social world has virtually exploded with a wealth of productivity apps, interactive personal trainers and beyond -- to say nothing of the complex effect the gamification movement has had on the concept of digital games that can help people feel better and do things better.
Portable phones now come equipped with GPS and accelerometers that can help people keep track of fitness goals, and reward-oriented game design shows promise in helping people engage with their health goals. But Ben Sawyer, founder of the games for health conference, says there are even more big things about to happen that can create opportunities for game developers.' 
A new Quintiles report suggests that:
* 81% of U.K. patients are more willing to take on risk and choose to take potentially risky medication – even if it is not approved for use in comparison to 72% of their U.S. counterparts, if they feel it is their only chance to improve their health. 
Google is bulking up on patents to protect its new augmented reality glasses project from legal attack, with at least nine new patents issued in the past week to cover various aspects of the futuristic devices. The patents provide a glimpse into what a heads-up display from Google could provide to real-life users beyond what we learned when Google unveiled Project Glass last month.
Perhaps most interestingly, one patent shows Google is working on a system to help hard-of-hearing and deaf users detect and interpret nearby sounds. The glasses' heads-up display would show arrows and flashing lights to indicate the direction and intensity level of the sound, and even display the words nearby people are speaking. 
Scientists at Newcastle University have developed a computer game designed to help stroke patients recuperate.
'Circus Challenge' was created with a computer game studio with the aim of helping patients recover motor functions.
Players use wireless controllers to perform virtual circus acts such as lion taming and plate spinning. 
Sean Chan envisages healthcare self-management in 2020:
'It's 2020. The at-home, telemedicine robot reminds me it's time for the doctor to check how well the burn on my arm is healing. The specialist is in a clinic located more than 45 miles away, but she thoroughly examines my arm through a wound assessment device built into the robot. After the consultation, my smart band reminds me that the mobile health vehicle will be at my workplace, and I should stop by to get my flu shot. I quickly acknowledge my medication reminder alert, take my meds, and then hop into my driverless smart car. On my way to work, I voice-tweet to share my symptom and treatment information with other patients like me in my social health group.
Science fiction? No. This is what digitally-driven healthcare might look like in 2020. All of these technologies and more are being evaluated by health care organizations, and have a solid chance of becoming reality over the next decade.' 
Most consumers believe that video games that force them to get up and move around can improve their health, a study from UnitedHealth Group suggests. 
Rachel Williams writes:
'Three-quarters of 11- to 16-year-olds in the UK have a mobile that can access the internet, and the number is rising rapidly: only a year ago the figure was 65%. More children and young people than ever – some 74% of five to 16-year-olds – have their own laptop or PC and 58% can now access the internet in the privacy of their bedroom. Those figures are up from 62% and 46% respectively just a year ago.
In that context it's no surprise that local authorities, primary care trusts and sexual health charities are increasingly turning to text services, apps and social media to provide advice and information to young people.' 
This article suggests that you health future may contain:
* GPS pacemakers and defibrillators. * Targeted medicine using nanorobots. * Embedded tracking chips. * Artificial intelligence to boost lost human function. * Rare visits to healthcare professionals
[AS: AI and wearable tech we already have. However, IMO embedded tech is going to have a short history, if it has one at all. Non-invasive technologies, scans and triggers seem more likely.] 
'A human-centered healthcare service delivery system that corresponds to the real needs of patients and their relatives and that guarantees accessible healthcare for all in an ever more constraining environment.' 
Fitness trends and health-care problems are creating demand for tiny computers we won't even notice we're carrying.
[AS: a passing, and short-lived phase due to its reliance on the 'hobbyist' mindset of people prepared to do this in the long term? (and who is?) Rather: non-invasive scanning, near-field sensors triggered by the data our bodies radiate, a personal health record synonymous with our DNA. That's #futurehealth from my POV.] 
Susannah Fox (@SusannahFox) writes:
Internet users who have experienced a recent medical emergency, their own or someone else’s, are also more likely than other internet users to go online to try to find someone who shares their situation: 23%, compared with 16%.
This fits the pattern observed in Pew Internet’s other research that people going through a medical crisis are voracious information consumers: 85% say they look online for health information, compared with 77% of internet users who have not had that experience in the past year. 
[The abstract concludes:]
An mHealth diabetes app with the use of gamification incentives showed an improvement in the frequency of blood glucose monitoring in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.
Extending this to improved health outcomes will require the incentives to be tied not only to frequency of blood glucose monitoring but also to patient actions and decision making based on those readings such that glycemic control can be improved.
J Med Internet Res 2012;14(3):e70 
The deaths of millions of young children and mothers each year can be prevented by building on recent innovations, say The Millennium Villages Project in this week's Lancet. |
Between noon and 2pm UK time today (24th May) the Guardian's healthcare network clinical research zone will be asking:
* What are patients' perceptions of research? * How can we improve their involvement? 
The seventh Earl Howe is an unlikely revolutionary, yet he hopes his department’s new information strategy - ‘The Power of Information’ - will set in train a far-reaching upheaval in the way healthcare services are delivered.
The parliamentary under secretary of state, who has a background in banking, says the strategy is “deliberately bold and consciously so.”
It is intended to create a culture shift among health professionals and patients that will enable a “digital first” NHS to be built from the ground up over the next decade.
[AS: I'm invoking the Ten Year Rule here.
Ten years: a timescale that is always deemed far enough away to be achievable, and which at the same time is too far off to exert the sort of pressure that is needed in order to drive change.
I don't believe in the commitment, but neither do I believe that the NHS has the direction, resources or capabilities to deliver it. Who will?
I'm concerned about such postion pieces paving the way for the further penetration of free market interests into national health provisions whose primary concerns are returns for their shareholders rather than the enhancement of patient care. The spectre of exclusion in this Utopian digital future is also a continuing issue.] 
Heidi Evans writes:
Scientists in New York and Boston have discovered a new type of prostate cancer that afflicts 15% of patients with the disease — and it could help doctors tailor treatments.
The researchers identified novel mutations in the so-called “S-Pop” gene and suspect they lead to a dangerous accumulation of proteins that drive tumor growth.
“This study, and our prior findings, tells us that prostate cancer is not just one disease but several diseases,” said Dr. Mark Rubin, vice chair for experimental pathology at Weill Cornell Medical College.
“This opens the door to development of specialized diagnostic tools and treatments.” 
'Online health communities that engage the patient as a whole person attend to personal and medical needs in a holistic manner. Whether current communities structure interaction between health professionals and patients to address the whole person is an open question. To gain insights into this question, we examined a sample of online patient communities to understand health professionals' involvement in bringing in medical advice into peer-patient conversations.
We found the communities fall short in supporting the whole person, because:
1. patient expertise and clinical expertise generated by health professionals are shared separately
2. patients' quantified data are separate from narrative experiences. Such separation in the design of these systems can lead to limitations in addressing patients' interwoven medical and personal concerns.
We discuss dilemmas and design implications for supporting the whole person in online patient communities.'
[Abstract of J. Huh et al, Tackling dilemmas in supporting 'the whole person' in online patient communities, Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 923-36. DOI: 10.1145/2207676.2208535] 
Traditionally pharma and medical device companies design health tools for health care professionals and in clinical settings. What's been missing is any thought about the end user: the patient.
But there's a movement afoot: the rise of patient voices to influence products related to them. Some of our voices are being sought by health care industry providers, some by patients themselves. 
There are plenty of incentive-based fitness apps on the market today, but IBM has taken a slightly different approach to weight loss gamification, with a monetized program that could bring competitive dieting to the workplace.
The system, which received patent approval in December, offers monetary rewards to users who eat well and exercise, while providing real-time feedback on calorie consumption and other health metrics. 
Smartwatches may be cool, but wearable health monitoring devices could save your life. These gadgets now run the gamut in goals, from managing chronic disease to optimizing fitness programs.
This article assesses ten devices currently in use, from hospital to home. 
Google revamps its search engine in an attempt to offer instant answers to search questions with a new function, the Knowledge Graph.
[AS: This makes me reflect once again how important it is to help ensure that people find the very best, reliable, relevant, patient-facing health information about symptoms, diagnosis and treatment, conveyed in plain language. More on a parallel project that I am looking to move forward: http://stwem.com/2011/12/21/what-is-the-best-health-information-on-the-internet-the-i-have-project/] ] 
The Society for Participatory Medicine (SPM) has expressed concern that proposed delays in allowing patients access to their EHR records under Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program are "arbitrary" and will hurt patient care. 
New textile-embedded technology from the University of Arkansas monitors blood pressure, body temperature, respiratory rate, oxygen consumption, “some neural activity,” and readings similar to a conventional electrocardiograph, and even the ability to display inverted T waves, which indicate the onset of cardiac arrest. Healthcare is needed everywhere, regardless of political, social, cultural or religious affiliation.
[AS: I'd add 'economic status' at the beginning. My POV: in the last instance, access to healthcare at the point of need is a human right. We're members of a species capable of looking after each other. We should do so.] 
Researchers at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have demonstrated that a partially paralyzed person could control a robot by thought alone, giving hope that someday immobilized people will be able to interact with even remote environments through pseudo-avatars.
To begin, the team used a head cap to record the brain signals of Mark-Andre Duc, who was located at a hospital over 50 miles away. This system is unique because it doesn’t require any invasive neural implants, simply an EEG cap fitted with electrodes.
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