mHealth and Motion capturing.

Motion capture, or Mocap, is a technique for digitally recording movement. Are we playing games her? Originally used as an analysis tool for biomechanics, mocap is now successfully employed in a wide variety of sectors including mHealth related applications.

Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.

Realtime data from mocap enables the diagnosis of problems or enhancement of performance in the arenas of biomechanics and sports. It can also assist in the design of products or buildings when applied to the field of engineering or ergonomics. Animazoo distinguishes three types of Mocap´s.

Gyroscopic systems use tiny inertial gyroscopes that are attached to a body. These directly record the rotations of the body parts. The rotational data is transmitted by radio to a receiver unit where it is mapped instantly to a skeleton in order that the data can be visualized in realtime. These systems perform with no lag in realtime, producing incredibly accurate data. The data retains nuance even with fast moves.

Mechanical systems track body joint angles directly and are often referred to as exo-skeleton mocap systems, due to the way the sensors are attached to the body. A person attaches the skeletal-like structure to their body and as they move so do the articulated mechanical parts, measuring the performer’s relative motion. Mechanical motion capture systems are realtime, relatively low-cost and usually wireless. Movement is captured through the placement of sensors (or markers) on or near each joint of the body. As each joint moves the positions or angles between the markers are recorded. Software records the, angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accurate digital representation of the movement.

Optical systems triangulate the 3D position of a marker between one, two or more cameras that have been pre-calibrated for distance to provide overlapping projections. Tracking a large number of markers or multiple performers is accomplished by the adding more cameras. These systems can be expensive to buy, require technical expertise to operate and are studio based. They have a relatively small capture area and can suffer from occlusion as well as being complicated to set up. Magnetic and electrical interference makes these systems highly susceptible to error, they also require extensive data cleaning and technical expertise to operate plus they suffer from limited area of use and lag for realtime use.

Magnetic systems calculate position and orientation by measuring the relative magnetic flux of three orthogonal coils on both the transmitter and each receiver. Magnetic systems require only two-thirds the number of markers compared to optical systems. One drawback is that the markers are susceptible to magnetic and electrical interference from metal objects in the environment and electrical sources. Magnetic and electrical interference makes these systems highly susceptible to error, they also require extensive data cleaning and technical expertise to operate plus they suffer from limited area of use and lag for realtime use.

MHealth secures hygiene in hospitals.

Experts say nearly 2 million hospital-acquired infections occur each year, resulting in about 5,000 deaths and more than 90,000 illnesses in the US. Research shows that simple hand washing by medical staff could cut the number of infections in half. But what if your rushing to the next patient? There is now a wireless, credit-card-sized sensor that can detect whether health care workers have properly washed their hands upon entering a patient’s room.

The Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center was chosen as a study site because of its higher-than-average rate of hand hygiene compliance, nearly twice the national average. The sensor is worn like a name badge and is programmed to detect the presence of ethyl alcohol, the most common ingredient in hand cleansing solutions used in hospitals.
When a health care worker enters a patient’s room, a small, wall-mounted sensor sends a signal to the badge to check for the presence of alcohol. The worker places their hands near the badge to obtain a reading. Lights on the badge glow red if no alcohol is present, indicating the need to wash hands. A green light indicates alcohol is present.

“Health care workers don’t deliberately avoid washing their hands; they get distracted or are so busy moving from one thing to the next they don’t remember to do it,” said Mike Edmond, M.D., chief hospital epidemiologist. “Until now, the only way we’ve been able to track hand washing habits is through direct observation. This new system continuously monitors and records data and serves as a constant reminder.”

The hand hygiene program is part of an aggressive environmental and patient safety campaign at the VCU Medical Center called Safety First, Every Day. The goal of the campaign is to make the medical center the safest health care institution in the country with no events of preventable harm to patients, employees and visitors. The device was developed by BioVigil, LLC.

MHealth muscles tests more accurate.

Doctors test the strenght of intrinsic hand muscles by letting the patient pull an push at their hand and fingers. Is this an accurate methode? No, a team of bioengineering students from Rice University developed a device to measure thenar, hypothenar, interosseus and lumbrical muscles.

Graduates Caterina Kaffes, Matthew Miller, Neel Shah and Shuai “Steve” Xu invented PRIME, or Peg Restrained Intrinsic Muscle Evaluator, for their senior project. “Twenty percent of all ER admissions are hand-related. Neuromuscular disorders like spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis-all these diseases affect the intrinsic hand muscles,” said Xu. PRIME, was created to replace the common test. The real goal is to quantify finger/muscle strength for a more accurate diagnosis for carpal tunnel syndrome evaluation and other disorders.

“U.S. surgeons perform over 500,000 procedures for carpal tunnel each year. $2 billion per year is spent treating this disease but up to 20 percent of all surgeries need to be redone. Our invention can be used across the spectrum of care from diagnosis to outcome measurements,” said Xu.

The device has three elements: a pegboard restraint, a force transducer enclosure and a PDA custom-programmed to capture measurements. In a five-minute test, a doctor uses pegs to isolate a patient’s individual fingers. “You wouldn’t think it works as well as it does, but once you are pegged in, you can’t move anything but the finger we want you to,” Miller said. A loop is fitted around the finger, and when the patient moves it, the amount of force generated is measured. “PRIME gets the peak force,” Xu said. “Then the doctor can create a patient-specific file with all your information, time-stamped, and record every single measurement.”

Ten features that make a tablet PC a unique device.

And here they are:

1. Write on the screen and draw figures and diagrams when taking notes. Use different color pens, circle things and draw arrows to indicate relationships and to mock up flow diagrams.
2. The interface is more personable and less intrusive. Comfortably hold the tablet and look at the person in the face.
   
3. Use it when standing, so it provides tremendous flexibility taking notes at the bedside.
4. Get a full keyboard when needed or swivel the screen.
5. While in a meeting, you can easily get away with a tablet.
6. You can be more efficient and faster navigating an electronic health record (EHR) that’s optimized for pen-based computing.
   
7. Using handwriting recognition forces to improve and maintain a certain quality of handwriting clarity.
   
8. Showin g patients diagrams, pictures, etc. to others.
   
9. It’s so natural to use the pen to scroll and “flip” through pages like a book while reading.
   
10. It invaluable on a plane and the person in front of you reclines and diminishes your workspace.

mHealth keeps them rolling.

Toyota announced that they have developed a thought-controlled wheelchair.  Honda has also developed a system that allows a person to control a robot through thoughts. Is the automotive industry coming to the health sector? Everything that’s rolling looks interesting now. See one of my last post.

Both companies continue to invest in innovation, science and engineering. The story of a bad economy and bad sales for a year or two is what you read in most newspapers. The story of why Toyota and Honda will be dominant companies 20 years from now is their superior management and focus on long term success instead of short term quarterly results.

The BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, along with Japanese government research institute, RIKEN, and Genesis Research Institute, has succeeded in developing a system which utilizes one of the fastest technologies in the world, controlling a wheelchair using brain waves in as little as 125 milliseconds (one millisecond, or ms, is equal to 1/1000 seconds.

Plans are underway to utilize this technology in a wide range of applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. R&D under consideration includes increasing the number of commands given and developing more efficient dry electrodes. So far the research has centered on brain waves related to imaginary hand and foot control. However, through further measurement and analysis it is anticipated that this system may be applied to other types of brain waves generated by various mental states and emotions.

Hope Phones for mHealth in Africa.

FrontlineSMS:Medic is a realy interesting initiative started by post-grad students out of Stanford University. They are the type of entrepreneurial digital natives that buck tradition and do something different, something that actually works. So what do the do? First was a rich text service. Now it’s the introduction of the HopePhone.

That team has built a major campaign, Hope Phones, to gather unused and discarded mobile phone handsets and convert them into funds for use in their mobile health campaigns in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa.

“Hope Phones will make use of the nearly 450,000 cell phones discarded every day in the US. HopePhones.org allows donors to print a free shipping label and send their old phone in to The Wireless Source, a global leader in wireless device recycling. The phone’s value allows FrontlineSMS:Medic to purchase usable, recycled cell phones for healthcare workers.”

This is a fundraising campaign, one put in place to promote a project that already has a track record of working.

Get involved:
1. Visit www.HopePhones.org and donate your old phones.
2. Spread the word:

• Email your friends, family, classmates and coworkers.
• Post on Facebook and become a fan of the Hope Phones page.
• Tell the world on Twitter – use #HopePhones as a tag so we can thank you.
• Let us know if you want the Hope Phones widget for your website or blog.

3. Contact info@hopephones.org if you’d like to help set up a Hope Phones collection center.

Here it comes: the thought-controlled homebased healthcare system.

Homeautomation is setting huge steps forward. Control with your mobile is already in place. More healthcare sensoring will be connected. What will the future bring? Scientists in London are close to perfecting a smart home system that is controlled by the user’s thoughts.

In addition to my postings last week, the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) uses electrodes attached to the scalp that allow the user to turn lights off and on, change the channel on the TV or open a door “by just thinking about it,” according to Science Daily.

g.tec, an Austrian medical engineering company, developed the (BCI) to assist the disabled. But it could have applications for the general population. g.tec teamed up with a group of international universities and research institutes as part of the EU-funded Presenccia project to incorporate its BCI technology into virtual environments. As part of the project a fully functioning smart home was created in virtual reality (VR).

“It has a kitchen, bathroom, living room… everything a normal home would have. People are able to move through it just by thinking about where they wanted to go,” Guger says. Being able to move and control objects in virtual reality solely by the power of thought could offer new and liberating possibilities for people with physical disabilities.

The electrodes are similar to the ones used by doctors for an Electroencephalogram (EEG). According to Science Daily, the BCI learns to identify the “distinctive patterns of neuronal activity produced when they imagine walking forwards, flicking on a light switch or turning up the radio.

Mindcontrolling by mHealth-devices.

For some years now researchers at the University of Zaragoza in Spain are working on a wheelchair that would be operated by thought alone. Can we control devices just by thinking? The work in Spain has yielded a prototype model that essentially performs the basic task of getting a person from one place to another.

By first providing options on a laptop screen for where to go, the system then reads EEG waves as the user focuses on the preferred choice and moves the chair accordingly. The chair displays a realtime 3D HUD while the user concentrates on basic functions, such as rotating the chair left or right. That information is read by the chair via EEG waves (the electricity running along your scalp as a byproduct of your brain working). The chair also features laser sensors, allowing it to override a circumstance in which a misreading could drive the user into a wall or an innocent bystander.

The company Ambient introduces a same breakthrough wheelchair called the Audeo. Thought generated control is also in development in recent game controllers. And Adam Wilson, a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Madison, linked up a “mind-reading” system developed at the Biomedical Engineering department to work with Twitter. By using EEG to record brain wave variations in patients focusing on a flashing letter. People who are locked-in and are not able to voluntarily use their muscles are now able to Tweet just like anyone else.

Does the portable lung becomes part of the mHealth-toolbox?

I’m not sure if there are any digital parts.  It’s more like a prosthetic. If so, wouldn’t I write about it? This invention of professor Bill Johns is amazing anough:worlds first portable lung.

A portable lung could help those with breathing problems lead a normal life. Researchers at the Swansea University in the United Kingdom say their device, which oxygenates blood outside the body before it goes through the lungs, could be an alternative to transplants. The scientists work together with Haemair Ltd in Wales and say it could take many years before the device, the size of a spectacles case, is available.

The device mimics the function of a lung by getting oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of the blood stream. The development is a three phase project. An external device will be deployed first. It is easily reversible and major parts are available for maintenance. The easy reversibility is important in treating emergency and acute cases for which the device might be needed for no more than hours or weeks. The second phase is the clinical procedure to “plumb” the device into the blood circulation system. It’s more complex and maintenance is more difficult. However, the engineering is simpler. The only significant external item required is a small air pump, or fan. This device is more suited to patients who will need it for months, for example, as a bridge to transplant. It should enable patients to leave hospital and continue treatment at home. The final variant, a prosthetic lung, serves as an alternative to a lung transplant. It cannot be deployed until we have extensive favourable experience with the reversible devices. However, it offers hope to those currently excluded from transplant waiting lists.

According to the British Lung Foundation, there are more than 40 conditions which affect the lungs and airways and impact on a person’s ability to breathe. They include lung cancer, tuberculosis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, sleep apnoea, avian flu, bronchiolitis and many others. Research suggests that one person in every seven is affected by lung disease. Professor Bill Johns: “It is important that we make something that will help people, who instead of being confined to a wheelchair with an oxygen bottle, can actually walk around and do things for themselves”.

RFID tags for medicine control at home.

RFID tracking is here. Want to know which medicine, when or what dosis to take? Just start with a home RFID kit for just $50.

Attach the RFID tags to things around your home or office, install the software and you’re good to go. You can use your own programming skills to make your computer do various things when various RFID tags are presented to your reader, or use an application website to link your RFID tags to just about anything on the web.

There are now two products on the market with the same kind of product and service. Mir:ror is an Internet of Things app from the company Violet. As the name suggests, it is literally a mirror – but an Internet-connected one which detects the objects you show it, triggering applications and multimedia content on your computer. It works via RFID stamps. These are colorful adhesive stamps that contain a relay chip. When the user waves a stamped object over the mir:ror, a pre-programmed action occurs. This can also mean reading a message aloud to you.

Second is Touchatag an internet startup from Alcatel-Lucent.  With a Touchatag starter kit and some client software, you can also program your own RFID tags so that they can do anything you want them to do. They can launch an application, deliver you to a URL, and much more. What’s great about Toucha’s tags is that you don’t need a specialized RFID reader in order to scan them. They’re can also be read with a barcodescanner in any enabled mobile phone.

The usage for medicinecontrol are specialy interesting. Reading the stamp you put on the medicinebottle can not only inform the patient with information about his useage, but can also sent data to a medical centre.

The Mir:ror also works with the company’s other internet-connected object: the Nabaztag, a cute robot rabbit that can deliver anything from ambient information through lights and sounds to verbal information.