Buzz e-sante

Here at the Greystone Healthcare Internet Conference, many of the discussions have revolved around utilizing social media in healthcare. One interesting perspective is to mobilize your physicians to utilize social media as a channel to communicate with their patients. To address this, the keynote speaker on Day One was Dr. Natasha Berger, whose engaging presentation demonstrated not only the value of social media in healthcare, but that she individually is a shining light for the whole healthcare industry.

Let’s start with the challenges facing your hospital’s physicians. According to Dr. Berger, these doctors are unsure:

a)      How to spread healthcare information to their patients and the public at large,

b)      How to truly take care of a patient when you see them so rarely,

c)      How to manage a patient’s condition when your visit is only 20 minutes long,

d)      How to cope with the fact that Facebook, WebMD, and Dr. Oz are the most popular sources for health information.

Today’s physician needs to understand that social media is not just about sharing funny cat videos. Instead, social media is one more tool for taking care of patients, reaches them where they are, and speaks in an informal yet powerful way. Moreover, 40% of social media users say a social media presence would influence their choice of doctor or hospital – so this is critical to your hospital’s growth.

Dr. Berger also argued that social media makes a doctor’s office more efficient. First, it decreases the number of phone calls to your practice. Second, you don’t have to do all the work yourself: social media is also a great channel for spreading the voices and insights of other brilliant physicians around the country. Third, using QR codes and shortlinks in the waiting rooms, Dr. Berger allows patients to educate themselves while they’re waiting to be seen. Fourth, social media and her blog allow patients to learn when they are ready to hear; as you can imagine, a busy doctor’s office isn’t always the best place to deeply educate that patient on their condition. This takes the boring, rote lectures out of the equation; now, Dr. Berger’s conversations are more focused and tailored to that individual family and their questions.

I found it especially interesting how Dr. Berger has used social media and the Web for far more than just simple communication. She used it as a bully-pulpit, publicly complaining to Fisher-Price about the safety of one of their products. She uses it to build trust with potential patients, long before they actually come into the office. Because Facebook has become a universal language that we all read and enjoy, as a result of Dr. Berger’s efforts, parents can now better communicate with their kids.

So how can your hospital engage doctors in social media? You’ll have to demonstrate how social media will help them do their jobs better, more efficiently, and more effectively. In addition, you can help promote and share that doctor’s talents on a national scale. How is your hospital using social media? How are you tracking the results?

Google-owned smartphone maker Motorola has applied for a patent for an "electronic tattoo" on people's necks that doubles as a mobile microphone, lie detector and digital display.

The tattoo would capture vibrations, or sound, directly from a user's throat, thus eliminating background noise that so often mars conversations over mobile phones.

The sound would then be transmitted from the electronic tattoo, which has its own power supply built-in, to a nearby smartphone via Bluetooth, near-field communication, also known as NFC, or the wireless technology ZigBee.

"Mobile communication devices are often operated in noisy environments ... Communication can reasonably be improved and even enhanced with a method and system for reducing the acoustic noise in such environments and contexts," reads the patent.

"The system comprises an electronic skin tattoo capable of being applied to a throat region of a body."

According to the patent, the device could also be used as a lie detector by measuring the skin's electrical conductance or "galvanic skin response" – the level at which electric current passes through something. 

"A user that may be nervous or engaging in speaking falsehoods may exhibit different galvanic skin response than a more confident, truth-telling individual," reads the patent.

The tattoo could even be fitted with a display and user interface for inputting commands, such as muting the device and joining a group conversation.

The device also has the potential to communicate with tablets and other mobile computing devices.

The patent, titled ''Coupling an electronic skin tattoo to a mobile communication device'' was filed in May 2012, and was published on Thursday in the US.

The neck tattoo is by no means the first foray into creative uses of technology for Motorola, which was bought by Google for $12 billion in 2011.

The company revealed its work with digital tattoos and password pills in May this year, and just last week Motorola unveiled Project Ara – a modular smartphone users can build and add to themselves.

It has focused on a new wearable tech unit since July, according to TechCrunch, while its parent company is hard at work on Google Glass, and is rumoured to be releasing a smart watch next year.

more at: http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/motorola-wants-to-tattoo-a-smartphone-receiver-on-your-neck-20131108-2x5ae.html

The quick pace of mobile technology, coupled with a broad worldwide penetration of smartphones, has effectively transformed Healthcare into a new entity called mHealth.  

In 2012, the number of medical application users will reach 247 million, which is more than double the 124 million users who downloaded medical applications in 2011.

Global revenue from mHealth apps grew from 140 million in 2010 to 1.3 billion in 2012, and continues to progress on an upward curve.

Why is mHealth so commercially successful, and what factors contribute to this economic success story?

Medication schedule management

Cancer treatment is a very complex and painful process demanding the highest level of accuracy from both physician and patient. And it is also an area where mobile technology can assist with treatment. Regular smartphones can be converted into effective medication schedule managers. This involves a straightforward process; simply select your cancer type and treatment plan, point to a start date, and make sure your device is in close proximity in order to see/hear reminders and notifications. Either patient or caregiver may add additional days and times for further dosage if required.

Tracking symptoms history

The tracking symptoms log included in the application is very important with regard to cancer treatment. Symptoms such as nausea, pain, fever, fatigue, lack of appetite, and any others that a user may wish to track, can be logged and showed to a doctor during a meeting or sent via e-mail.

Tracking blood count

Some cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, may damage not only cancerous cells but also normal body cells including blood cells.

Reach the doctor easier

The modules described above not only enable a user to cope with cancer treatment, but also to prepare valuable information for an appointment with a doctor. To make appointments more effective and informative, users can type or voice record their questions beforehand. During the meeting, users have the option to type or voice record a doctor’s answers as well. When the FAQ database is available, users can browse it through a mobile device to see available answers and adjust their questions appropriately.

Receive up-to-date information

Cancer is one of the most researched medical conditions in the world, and those who have contracted it often desire to be kept informed about the most up-to-date information and cure recommendations.

Stay connected with community

It’s easier to cope with a problem when you know that you are not alone. Access to a community, the ability to ask questions, the opportunity to read success stories, and to be able to participate in a community information exchange is extremely important in a cancer sufferer’s battle to stay positive. Thus, this module is a very valuable addition to a companion app for people struggling with any serious long-term disease.

SOURCE : http://migrate2mobile.com/blog/2013/08/29/mhealth-building-a-mobile-companion-app-for-cancer-sufferers/

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Mobile devices are uniquely positioned to make a significant contribution to medical imaging. Portability, computing power, accessibility and built in internet connectivity are well described advantages of mobile devices. There is a growing body of research which supports the use of mHealth technologies for imaging, and a number of novel uses are described in the literature.

The role of mobile devices in medical imaging has broaden to encompass a broad range of functions including diagnostic purposes, facilitating triage of emergent conditions, improving communication between health care providers to expedite patient care, and providing a feasible system for patient follow-up and self monitoring. The ever increasing capabilities of mobile technologies have also enabled their purpose to expand beyond simply an image capturing tool. This has been reflected in a spectrum of basic sciences, medical and surgical specialties, and public health that are using the imaging capabilities of mHealth to improve access and delivery of patient care.

One of the more novel fields of mHealth emergence is in its role as a diagnostic instrument in the laboratory. Traditionally, laboratory tasks such as microscopy, fluorescent imaging, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) require sophisticated and expensive equipment. In this context, the use of mobile technology has been explored as a viable adjunct for laboratory imaging to perform calorimetric analysis of fluid to detect biomarkers of ovarian cancer, microscopy to detect giardia lamblia,and optofluidic assessment for rapidly performing cell counts of body fluid samples.

The use of mobile devices for medical imaging is rapidly growing, with many traditional imaging techniques being challenged. With increasing image quality, and software designed to take advantage of the computational power of smartphones, combined with rapidly declining costs, mHealth imaging has the potential to change the future of medical image capture.

 read more at the original source: http://www.journalmtm.com/2013/the-utility-of-mhealth-in-medical-imaging/