Wound patients typically get lots of care at home, either from visiting nurses or from home care providers. Now technology is coming to even this forgotten medical market. And not surprisingly, it is mobile phone technology with backing from a big gun: AT&T. What we know is that the Wound Technology Network, a telehealth-based wound management service, is giving out HTC smart phones equipped with iVisit software to many of its providers for sending images back to specialists for remote analysis:
Under a two year agreement with AT&T, Wound Technology Network will equip its clinical staff including physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants across South Florida and Southern California with HTC FUZE™ smart mobile devices when providing care in patient’s homes. Clinical staff will use the devices to access an application developed by iVisit which creates videoconferencing tools for mobile devices and PCs and speak live with a wound care specialist at Wound Technology Network’s tele-health center who will assist them to assess the patients’ wounds and perform the necessary treatment. To aid in the treatment process, clinical staff will also capture images of the patient’s wounds using the HTC FUZE™ and transmit the images to the wound care specialists to upload onto an electronic medical record which is immediately faxed to the patient’s primary care physician.
Press release: Wound Technology Network Teams with AT&T to Faciliate Treatment of Chronically Wounded Patients in Their Homes…
Product pages: iVisit Mobile; HTC FUZE…
Flashback: Camera Phones to Interpret Visible World for Blind
An interdisciplinary team of European scientists has been studying the potential value of low-temperature atmospheric plasma for applications in medicine. One particular example is a device developed at Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany that can sterilize equipment by showering it with atoms stripped of their electrons. Unlike commonly known plasma, the low-temperature variety uses only a small number of stripped atoms to create the wanted effect.
ProUroCare Medical out of Eden Prairie, MN has filed an application with the FDA to receive approval for the firm’s prostate analysis tool. The ProUroScan device uses what’s known as “elasticity imaging technology” to measure the stiffness of the prostate by applying pressure to the organ and feeling the physical resistance through a sensor.
Here’s more from the company about its technology:
Using a sophisticated positioning system and complex mathematical algorithms, the ProUroScan technology is able to assemble the individual images it generates into a composite image, or “map” of the prostate. Tissue exhibiting comparatively less elastic properties is identified by darker colors on the map, similar to how areas of precipitation are displayed on a weather radar map.
