Page 116 - Proceedings of the 2017 ITU Kaleidoscope

2017 ITU Kaleidoscope Academic Conference

3. THE ICT-ECOSYSTEM MEETS-UP The Outpatient Department (Ambulatorium) offers usually
HEALTH-CARE more comfort, privacy and a little bit more time for the
patients, however, the complexity and the severity of the
The modern Hospital includes five major areas that will be procedures leading to a correct Diagnosis and Treatment, is
directly affected. not much less pressing, compared to ED. Therefore, the
• The Emergency and Outpatient Departments. employment of the IoT will bring all the advantages
mentioned previously, providing more time and lower cost.
• The Imaging and Radiotherapy Departments. However, additional advantages that can be provided in the
• The Surgical Departments, the Intensive Care very near future, will be the practically full automation of
Units (ICU/CCU, NICU etc.) and the Wards. the Continuity of Care record and the advantages brought,
• The in vitro Diagnostics, Hematology, Transfusion by the use of semantically enriched XML; it will reduce the
Medicine, Cell Therapy Laboratories and Units. paper-work load and will “create” more time for the
• The various Supporting Facilities (e.g. physicians and the nurses, to be spent for the patients,
Sterilization, Laundry, Food-services, Building making medical practice, a little bit more reasonable.
Engineering etc.). Synopsizing, we could remark that, as far as, the technical
Home-care and Health self-inspection will be increasingly aspects are taken into consideration, the crucial aspects
employed for caring about major social groups, as the related, to the difficulty degree of this transformation, the
ageing population and people physically and/or mentally ED and the Outpatient Department (OPT), posses a high
impaired. This task is being accomplished, by retrieving and heterogeneity and scalability degree, due to the multiplicity
evaluating relevant recent Publications and published of the ED-and OPT-devices, ranging from numerous minor
Industrial Property Documents (IP-Docs), attempting to devices, such as pumps, disposable catheters, O2-saturation
predict the expected progress. monitors etc. to medium-sized monitors and ventilators, up
to expensive Imaging Systems and Anesthesia Machines.
3.1. The Emergency and the Outpatient Departments As far as Self-organization, Interoperability and Security
are concerned, the tasks to be performed can be analyzed in
standardized steps and the combination of this approach,
The Emergency Department (ED) includes schematically a with Semantics, lead to a rather acceptable quality. Finally,
sequence of acting, starting by receiving of an Emergency the Low Energy Data exchange and Tracking, is easily
call or another notification, of an incoming emergency provided in the present hi-tec environment, which is not the
patient. An “IoT-device” can accelerate the identif ication case, in home-care or patient’s shelf-inspection settings.
and the registration of the patient, by transmitting a first
standard message, including for instance a SSN ID-string – 3 3.2. The Imaging and Radiotherapy Departments
(Social Security Number) and eventually, a codified
preliminary short-description, based for instance on one or
two WHO ICD-10 assumed codes, over the IoT-device IP, A “Medical Imaging IoT” can be traced-back over 20 years
during the transportation. The second cardinal step is the ago, since the concept of connecting and monitoring
“triage”, based on the collection of in Vitro diagnostic medical imaging equipment, via remote servers over the
(IVD) data, either on site by employing Point of Care Internet is not new. It has been the corner-stone of the
Testing (PoCT), or transmitted from central Lab over the remote servicing capabilities that medical imaging vendors
Autoanalyzer’s IP-address. started to offer many years ago. Remote connectivity [21]
The collection of relevant electrical and non-electrical has allowed for efficiency in equipment maintenance and
Biosignals, acquired on site, digitized and transmitted support functions to a service model, adopting proactive
wirelessly and simultaneously to the patient-record and to a and preventative service. Most Medical Imaging customers
Decision Supporting Module (DSM), accelerating the acquire remote services by vendors that allow for, early
triage-procedure and finally to the ED-records [20], [21]. symptoms spotting of an approaching breakdown,
In between Medical Imaging (US, CT, MRI etc.) exami- minimizing, thus, downtime.
nations are performed on site or elsewhere, and the data are Concerning the major “Medical-imaging manufacturers”,
transmitted wirelessly to the Radiology Information System they are taking serious steps towards the “next generation”
(RIS) and to the Picture Archiving and Communication of the Internet of “Medical Imaging Things” [21]-[28].
system (PACS), contributing to the final Diagnosis and to GE Healthcare intents to connect 500,000 Imaging
the appropriate treatment, of the ED-patient. Machines, on the new GE Health Cloud, as announced at
th
st
The IoT devices are useful, because they are able to 101 RSNA, on Nov. 29 2015, to help clinicians deliver
participate fast and actively to the “reconstruction” of the better outcomes.
distributed parts of the patient’s record, and provide in a Siemens Healthcare is based on its developed remote
limited time-interval, a more complete medical history of monitoring of equipment technology (Lifenet and Siemens
the patient, facilitating a rush progress of the acute patient’s Remote Services, Microsoft Azure), and has made
treatment. significant progress, in developing the “Teamplay” IoT
platform for Medical Imaging.

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