Tele-Tracking and Remote Health Monitoring

Image by gaspar via Flickr

Medical Care Technologies Inc. (MDCE) today announced completion of version 5.1 of the Trackker(TM) technology for patients suffering with Alzheimer's and Dementia.
The Trackker and its Tele-Health Suite use wireless connections to link a GPS monitor that is worn by the patient and is linked to a 24/7 monitoring service. By programming the GPS to certain safety zones, the service can send a phone or email alert to a caregiver immediately. GPS systems (based on 24 satellites and their ground stations) typically track patients in open areas outside of buildings however, the Patient Tracker system has the ability to monitor the location of patients within and around facilities.
According to the Alzheimer's Disease International, in 2008 there were 30 million people with dementia worldwide. By 2050, it is projected that this figure will have increased to over 100 million and so will numbers of people with Alzheimer's disease. Much of the increase will be in developing countries, especially China, India, and their south Asian and western Pacific neighbours.

Many other remote monitoring systems are commercially available (See, for example, GPS shoes that let mommy know where kids are) Among silvertech offerings, Japanese conglomerate Marubeni’s technology seems to be particularly advanced.

Developed by the Advanced Institute of Wearable Environmental Information Networks, the sensor intended to be worn on the chest measures just 3×3cm and is 5mm thick. Vital signs such as body temperature or heart rate can be monitored remotely and analyzed using special software.

Acciordign to The Nikkei, sensors cost around $350 each, while Marubeni charges $110 monthly for using the software. The company aims at generating $11 million in sales in the first year with the system.

And you may even not wear anything at all in order to be monitored - if you have a tiny chip implanted under your skin. Formerly known as VeriChip, PositiveID ( SVUL) is beginning a study of its Health Link implantable microchip in diabetic, hypertensive and obese patients. The implanted chip can be scanned to access the patient’s online medical records, check glucose and cholesterol levels (see HealthScreenDirect) and is expected to improve disease management. The company’s critics fear the chip will one day become mandatory, leading to a complete loss of medical privacy and healthcare benefits. Credit and Health monitoring may be even integrated. Google and Microsoft are said to be among those possibly testing the chips.

================================================================
This is a continuation of telemedicine/wireless health series by Aurametrix. Previous blogs included Telemedicine: part 1; Telemedicine: part 2; survey of Health 2.0 Software tools, Devices to keep you healthy; Going for the piece of a healthcare pie; On M-Health, wireless health and smart plasters.

Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, Azure and Other Cloud Services

Image via Wikipedia

What platform is the best to build an application for cloud computing? Google App Engine? Amazon EC2 and their other hosted services? Microsoft Azure platform? The following tips and recommendations are based on several articles and presentations telling how to navigate the cloud wisely and choose the right platform for particular applications.

The big heralds of Amazon's offering are flexibility, configurability and pay-only-for-what-you-use model. Many pharma companies - Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson - have tried and liked AWS. If you are craving control, are already set on a database model and have a ton of data to import, go with Amazon - their command-line access is heavily praised.

Unlike Amazon, Python-centric Google App Engine starts out free, and only costs as you start to get a lot of traffic and use a ton of computing resources. GAE/J supports Java and JRuby. Google offers ease-of-use and a large degree of automatic configuration, although they do want you to use Google's database vs MySQL or PostgreSQL. If you are a Python and Django junkie and do not like C extensions, go with Google.

Rackspace’s Mosso bills itself as a Web app hosting service. Coders choose what technology stack they want their apps to run on and upload their code. Mosso supports both Windows and Linux, PHP, Ruby on Rails, .Net, Perl, Python, MySQL, and SQL Server. Mosso does not yet support Java applications. SpringSource, on the other hand, offers a comprehensive suite of products for powering the entire build, run, manage enterprise Java application lifecycle.

The Globus Toolkit is a collection of software solutions to many science and engineering applications. Univa UD is utilized in some science and high-throughput engineering environments too.

Microsoft Azure platform is aimed at C#, .NET, Visual Studio, Windows and other Microsoft-tool-loving developers.

Likewise, IBM platform provides access to IBM middleware such as DB2. Informix and WebSphere.


IBM cloud presentation:


I attended this talk earlier last year, it was presented for the Silicon Valley CTO group. Went through it again today.

CommunityOneEast 09 - Running Java On Amazon EC2

View more documents from chris.e.richardson.

Check also these videos on Google App Engine

Counting Health Care Costs

Is control of health care costs possible?

A piechart from this article shows that constantly rising health care costs are mostly due to hospital care (31%). Physician services are the next largest item, comprising one-fifth of the national health spending. Prescription drugs, while accounting for only 10% of total expenditures, have been the fastest-growing segment along with new medical technologies that are often not cost-effective, and provide incremental improvement or just an illusion for consumers that they are better taken care of. Second major contributor to the increase in spending is chronic disease. It actually accounts for 75% of national health expenditures. Aging of the population also contributes (although rather minimally) to the high growth rate of health care spending. Administrative costs comprise 7% of health care expenditures (<2%>Medicare program).

So the primary cost is unnecessary complexity. We need to change the culture of medicine, it's business model to improve the efficiency in delivering care and reduce the cost resulting from the wrong model.

An excellent blog in New York Times yet again explains the reasons on why health care costs so much. Great comments from the readers provide even more insight.

Here are a few excerpts we can't agree more:

"Health care is expensive because of the pervasive entitlement attitude" Joseph R. Antos, the William H. Taylor scholar in heath care and retirement policy at American Enterprise Institute.

"Insurers, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturers, doctors and hospitals are all able to drive up prices with limited pushback" Jacob S. Hacker, the Stanley B. Resor professor of political science at Yale University.

"People often do not have control over medical expenses, the way they can control expenses when buying a car"
"Another reason normal market forces fail in the health care system is a lack of clear information. Purchasing health care is not like buying a car.", "the price tag is rarely even discussed", "people often do not have control over medical expenses",
David M. Herzenhorn

"The costs of medical care are a hodgepodge of different prices for different patients", "There is no rational process for selecting a cost-effective treatment", M Mackiernan

"How do I "negotiate" my fees when they are pre-set by my insurance company?", "I keep reading that doctors recommend unnecessary tests but how am I to know what's necessary? I'm not a doctor. I just want to feel better and that's why I go to the expert", E. Nowak

"Doctors and patients rarely know the costs and administrators do not want them to know.",

Andy

"Health insurance is not really insurance at all. It is more like a membership fee to a YMCA.", Marci Twain

"The most powerful way we can reduce medical costs is for people to stop getting medical care when non-medical health care will suffice.", Anonymous Commenter

"One element of the increasing cost is the vast overtesting that is performed in teaching hospitals.", "A large fraction of blood tests, procedures, and imaging are simply a waste, but there is no effort to put any brakes on the system.", David Freeman

"Please do not ever think a doctor writes a prescription because it is his best choice, it usually is written because he likes the pharmaceutical rep and she or he has treated the like a king.",
Mark Shryock

"New and fancy machines which offer marginal improvement in actual care but cost more.", PH

"What a mess. It makes me sick--a luxury I apparently cannot afford.", Elliot

"In essence the solution to cost control is in great part in the realm of industrial engineering. Lets get the industrial engineers on board and perhaps in charge.", Rafael Venegas

"The vast majority of xrays scans and tests performed are done to avoid malpractice. .. Americans are radiated so doctors can avoid the awful pressure of lawsuits and you pay for it..", Boly

"In some areas, like implantable medical devices, an increasing number of manufacturers contractually require hospitals to keep prices that hospitals pay secret from the surgeons who tell hospitals which products to buy.", Jeffrey Lerner

"The reason health care in the U.S. is so expensive is because all the players (doctors, lawyers, insurance companies, drug companies, medical equipment companies, patients, et al.) are abusing the system.", G. Stern

"I can't believe a five minute altrasound cost over 1,000 dollars", Linda

"Capitalist theory says that price is set at that point at which providers (suppliers) receive enough money to be induced to make the products and consumers (demanders) are willing to pay for that product. The problem is that the demand for health care is “relatively inelastic.”.. there is no limit on the will of the consumer to pay.", AF

Let me disagree with the last commenter, though. "Thank God", says AF, "I do not have to know the science behind to know the relative effectiveness rates of each type of treatment". A century ago nobody would imagine been able to make a phone call or operate a computer. May be people like to live too much. But better tools will be created to allow them make informed decisions to better their health and their lives at reasonable costs.


Aurametrix is developing decision support systems to help you evaluate personal health risks, decide on preventative measures, estimate cost/benefits of performing diagnostic tests. Better solutions for a healthier world.

On M-Health, Wireless Health and Smart Plasters

M-health or mobile health is a recent term for mobile devices supporting medical practice. This term is closely related to Telemedicine (coined in the 1970s) and to another recently introduced term wireless health.

Aurametrix wrote about exciting health gadgets and devices in several last year's blogs (such as Telemedicine: part 1, Telemedicine: part 2, Devices to keep you healthy, Going for the piece of a healthcare pie)

Many companies - large and small -make use of wireless sensors to collect clinically-actionable data for point-of-care. Companies including GE, Cinterion, Cardionet, Heatlhsmart, Digi, RIM, Proteus, E-Device, MedApps, are now working in mobile health area offering products and developing prototypes. Check, for example T+ Medical, Turkcell's Saglik365, Orange's Diabeo, Telstra's My-Glucose, Cardionet's MCOT™, and numerous cell phone applications (as some people say, the Phone will become your doctor) such as Allscripts remote. And there will be many more exciting developments - portable wearable devices scanning brain for signs of depression & stress disorders,

Everyday choices determine your health better than genomics. In addition to exciting gizmos and wearable monitors measuring activity, heart rate, sleep patterns, some companies are working on tiny implantable sensors helping to monitor health and health-related behaviors.
Proteus Biomedical is implanting tiny sensors into pills that send signals translatable into messages - such as "just took lipitor at 6:20pm" - sent in a very safe and private way to a wearable plaster, or a smart-band aide. This smart plaster is also picking up information on health-related measurements such as your heart rate, breathing patterns, activity level, stress, respiration
get sends you reminders. Last September Novartis worked with Proteus on a small 20 patient study to track patients’ compliance with their blood pressure drug regimen. This year the companies will work on sensor technology in organ transplantation.


American tech companies, taking notice of the unmistakable demographic trends, have launched a surge in gudgets for aging population - dubbed the silvertech. Emergency alert services have become a proliferating category in silvertech, along with sensor systems for the home, various kinds of long-distance health monitoring and smart medication dispensers that provide reminders and control dosage. Some dispensers signal a caregiver when a dose isn’t taken or a pharmacy when it’s time for a refill.

GE scientists are developing wearable RFID sensors to detect airborne chemical agents - to alert people to the presence of environmental chemical agents in the air. A novel technology based on resonant antenna structures of RFID sensors coated with various sensing films will recognize specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and chemical agents with part-per-billion detection limits. The sensor could also be used to analyze a person’s breath. Simply breathing on the sensor could potentially pick up biomarkers that serve as an early signal to the presence of certain diseases such as diabetes or cancer and metabolic disorders.

Non Invasive Health Monitoring with mHealth

View more documents from Bart Collet.

Related articles by Zemanta

• GE's wearable sensors would warn of hazards in the air (timesunion.com)
• Electronic Nose Sniffs out Toxins (nih.gov)
• Study shows how carbon nanotubes can affect lining of the lungs (scienceblog.com)
• Daily Dose: There's BPA in That? (dailywd.womansday.com)
• Wearable RFID Sensors being developed (ubergizmo.com)
• The new healthcare: Smart band aids, digital pills, wrist bands promise to track your health (venturebeat.com)
• In Health Care Today, It's Electronic All the Way (nlm.nih.gov)
• mHealth, Alpha Daughters and Healthcare Reform (prweb.com)

Environmental Mapping: from personal choices to global impact

Image by manybits via Flickr

In the not-so-far-away-future, we will be surrounded by “smart dust” — tiny digital sensors, strewn around the globe, gathering all sorts of information and communicating with powerful computer networks to monitor, measure and understand the physical world in new ways.

These tiny sensors could be embedded in identification badges or cloth, perhaps using resonant antenna structures of RFID sensors or other systems coated with various sensing films that will recognize specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs), biological and chemical agents with part-per-billion detection limits. Wearable RFID sensors could detect not only airborne chemical agents alerting to the presence of environmental chemical agents, but also breath biomarkers serving as early signals to the presence of certain diseases such as diabetes or cancer and metabolic disorders.

Wondering where it's safe to swim in Europe? An initiative called Eye on Earth - Water Watch created by Microsoft and the European Environment Agency and powered by Bing will help you find out what water you can swim in without wondering if you're going to go home with more than just memories.

Want to keep an Eye on Earth? From plankton blooming off the coast of Ireland, diminishing and increasing populations of plants and animals, satellite images of the planet could give a more vivid understanding of the world that surrounds us. Launched during the recent United Nations Climate Change Conference, the interactive online Environmental Atlas of Europe initially focuses on visuals and stories from European countries.

Microsoft and EEA have previously collaborated on the Eye on Earth platform, which combines scientific information with on-the-ground local observations contributed by millions of users on topics such as water quality at more than 22,000 swimming sites in Europe. The AirWatch application provides real-time data on specific air pollutants from air-quality monitoring stations, as well as user-submitted descriptions of air quality in different areas. Much of the information is available through text messages as well as online. Future plans for Eye on Earth include tracking ground-level ozone, oil spills, biodiversity, and coastal erosion to create what the partnership calls "a global observatory for environmental change." Other available online tools include Danish MapMyClimate that allows people to understand the impact of their consumer habits on the environment; Project2Degrees, emissions-tracking software developed in partnership with the Clinton Foundation that allows city authorities to measure and reduce their emissions; Fiat eco:Drive, a dashboard tool that helps drivers improve their fuel efficiency; and Bend the Trend, a website where users around the world can pledge to make lifestyle changes that will have a positive impact on emissions reduction.

In addition to smart sensors, smart phones can provide more powerful capabilities combining human intelligence and the ability of phones to automatically record pictures and sounds, tagged with keywords, where and when information automatically uploaded to web sites

PEIR, the Personal Environmental Impact Report, is one of many online tools that allows to explore and share how you impact the environment and how the environment impacts you.
This project involves collecting travel, time and location data from mobile phones feed into Web databases to calculate an individual’s personal environmental impact and exposure to pollutants. Another tool - whatsinvasive.com, in cooperation with the National Park Service, uses a smartphone application to identify, photograph and track the advance of invasive plants, like Harding grass and poison hemlock, which can crowd out local species and undermine biodiversity.

Deborah Estrin, a computer scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles and her colleagues at the university’s Center for Embedded Networked Sensing have designed several projects that use cellphones and people in data-gathering and analysis. Cellphones, they say, are versatile data collectors and are becoming more powerful all the time — with cameras, GPS, accelerometers and Internet connectivity. Their work is at the forefront of an emerging field called participatory sensing.

Welcome 2010!

According to Bill Vaughan, an optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

Goodbuy 2009 was more frequently twitted as 2010 was sweeping across the globe, but there were no more pessimists left shortly after 2010 arrived on the islands of Western Hemisphere.
2009 was a year to remember but not repeat . Everyone hopes for a better year, so "Happy New Year"will continue to be a trending topic for a while - even if not among the top 10.

Wellcome 2010!

The deadly kiss - on allergens and other things you do not want in your system

Be careful who you kiss, especially if you have sensitivities to food, chemicals or other substances you do not want to have in your body.

Richard Gasquet was cleared of doping today, on the grounds that cocaine had been passed into his system from a nightclub kiss.

What else could we get from an innocent kiss?

Remember the tragic story of a peanut allergic teenager from Quebec? Christina Desforges went into anaphylactic shock and died after being kissed by her boyfriend who had just eaten a peanut butter sandwich. An almost immediately administered adrenaline shot didn’t help.

Though not widely recognized, food hypersensitivity by inhalation can cause a lot of problems. 8 top allergens (TEMPS WFS: Tree nuts, Eggs, Milk, Peanuts, Shellfish (crab, lobster, shrimp), Fish (bass, cod, flounder), Wheat, Soy) cause 90% of food allergies. Food related allergies have been on the rise in recent years. Whether this is due to the use of baby creams and lotions (e.g., with a peanut oil content) in early childhood, 20th century hygiene, synthetic & fortified foods or other issues of Western civilization, we need to be careful and think about all possible ways of being exposed.

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) (causing mononucleosis - infamously known as the kissing disease), Herpes Simplex Virus-1 (causing cold sores) bacterium Streptococcus (causing various infections such as gum disease and strep throat), H.pylori, Candida or other yeast species, Hepatitis B Virus and cytomegalovirus (CMV) are spread via oral transmission from microbe-containing saliva. Many sexually-transmitted diseases follow this route too.

Even cigarettes - besides their harmful toxic chemicals - host a bacterial bonanza —hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, according to a new study. For example, Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated not only with pneumonia but also with urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections.

One of the best natural defenses in our saliva is the “good” bacteria and supporting it molecular environment that protects us from settlements of pathogenic microbes and prevents their growth. Some people are more susceptible than others, but everybody should be careful... about whom they kiss.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tennis player Gasquet cleared of doping (cbc.ca)
• Gasquet Faces Cocaine-Kiss Hearing Next Week (abcnews.go.com)
• Kids' Allergies: Epidemic or Medical Myth? (abcnews.go.com)
• Total of 24 cases of anaphylaxis after 15M H1H1 shots (ctv.ca)
• New Online Solution for Food Allergy Sufferers. Allergiesandme.com Provides Needed Resources (prweb.com)
• New evidence food allergies growing among children (newswire.ca)