Home based medical observatory
According to the World Health Organisation, the instances of chronic patient care are on the rise. Consequently, this has placed a strong demand on telecommunications and multimedia to promote and develop medical care facilities based at home. Ideally, these facilities should provide as comprehensively good quality care at home as one would expect to receive at a care centre. With functions such as sensors and analytical technologies, many of these services offer comprehensive coverage, coming close to such quality of service. The local patient computer in this technology offers greater functionality as it answers the demand for these technologies to be based on both new organisational models and support technologies. Complete with advanced, miniaturised and non-intrusive sensors that provide high-quality real-time data, stored, analysed and, if need be, forwarded to an alerted medical service. This system can collect ECG, blood pressure, pulse, oxymetry and temperature readings, analyse these readings according to predefined procedures and automatically alert medical facilities if necessary. The main advantage of the technology is coupled with these real-time monitoring capabilities; that of providing comprehensive functionality for in-home patient-follow ups. The patient computer, while being home based serves as a bridge between the home monitoring and the medical infrastructure at large such as with existing Hospital Information Systems. Additionally, the AI interface is capable of triggering treatment and care services based on the evaluation of single or even multiple elements from the patient's medical status. A prototype is currently available and has additionally been adapted as a mobile unit. All units, regardless of whether it is home-based or mobile, feature the database and a control centre unit. It is this unit that proves an efficient tool for administration and patient surveillance. While the mobile unit offers no additional innovative features, it does come ready to deal with all needs for a mobile caregiver. The developers are looking for a number of agreements, including license and joint venture agreements.
