So here we are at the Commonwealth Medical Association conference in Colombo, with over 1000 people here all eager to either help transform healthcare or learn how others are doing it.
The best part is that the appetite to learn and adopt the latest and greatest technology that can help optimise the professional is lot more than it was only 2-3 years ago. I would like to share with you how we told our patient journey story.
The Microsoft Health Alliance
We call it “The Microsoft Health Alliance” which is a group of healthcare companies that got together to showcase some of the best cloud based healthcare applications, devices and IoT (Internet of Things) devices on offer. The 60+ square meters booth simulated multiple environments that started in the patient’s home with remote virtual care through to the hospital and back out to the primary care physician in a clinic.
Firstly a local partner Hemas Life presented their wellness program and IoT devices one of which took measures of your weight, height and then a lot of sensors worked on you to predict your age and BMI and fat content, after trying it, I can’t say that I liked what it had to say about me, but we can take this discussion offline, or better still let’s not discuss me!
Another partner RingMD demonstrated their latest chatbot ‘Cardea’ which is a conversation as a platform that provides a patient personalised healthcare advise from the comfort of their home and then connects them to a doctor is need be via the RingMD platform. In this instance Cardea receives a reading the patient’s heart rate is abnormally high and prompts him with a few questions about his wellbeing which then leads to offering him a Teleconsult with a doctor that quickly works out that our patient is about to have a heart attack.
The patient is now admitted at which point some diagnostic investigations were required using one of Toshiba’s latest ultrasound machines and combined with Vital Images diagnostic 3D/4D tools that helped to quickly identify the issue as an cardiac arterial blockage and plan the stent implant, an un-invasive and painless planning procedure that would have otherwise been an angiogram.
Next was some cool IoT devices from another local partner Xelution, one of which was a device that acted as a reminder to nurses and other healthcare providers to sanitise as they move through the hospital in order to minimise the risk of hospital acquired infections.
Now that our patient has had the procedure and is recovering in the ward, we want him engaged and informed and even entertained. OneView is a world class patient engagement application that works on a hospital provided tablet or the patient can bring their own device and see who their care team is, what the procedure entailed, what they should and should not do after being discharged, order food, watch a movie just like being on a plane and more.
Prior to discharging our patient who was named “Mr John Williams” we want to ensure that he is not at high risk or re-admission and for that we call on Proskritive an American based company that predicts the re-admission risk associated with each patient allowing health care professionals to take precautions to minimise the risk and in this case we ask the patient to wear a mobile 3 cord ECG that uploads data real time to the Microsoft Azure cloud and feeds any abnormalities back to the family care physician.
The family care physician uses Clinic to Cloud to get a complete view of the patients medical history, manage the practice, access John William’s clinical file and engage his John with the Clinic to Cloud portal and patient app. The family care physician is now concerned about John’s wellbeing after receiving an alert that John’s heart rate is high again, he uses Skype for business to consult the cardiovascular surgeon who performed the procedure on John to determine the course of action if any is required at all.
The star of the show was the Microsoft HoloLens, an augmented reality device that is first of its kind in the world. The HoloLens was featured at the booth in Colombo for the first time in Sri Lanka and hundreds of attendees got the opportunity to try it and explore the some of the possibilities including the anotomical holograms available within the Hololens for teaching and learning.
I would also like to let you know that I now own a HoloLens and we will be featuring it in some of the events and I urge you to try it if you get the chance.
A patient centred journey that engages the patient and optimise operations was the theme of the event and the reception from the audience was fantastic. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Callum Bir and the team at Microsoft Sri Lanka for making this event possible.
To learn more about Clinic to Cloud email us on hello@clinictocloud.com.au
