Mobility Of Doctors Research Articles

A Novel Portable Real-Time Low-Cost Sleep Apnea Monitoring System based on the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Network.

Background and objectiveContinuous monitoring of breathing activity plays a vital role in the detection of respiratory-based diseases (SA, COPD, etc.). Sleep Apnea (SA) is characterized by recurrent upper airway obstruction during sleep associated with arterial blood desaturation, sympathetic nervous system activation, and cardiovascular impairment. Untreated patients with SA have increased mortality rates compared to the general population. This study aims to design a remote monitoring system for sleep apnea to ensure patient safety and ease the workload of doctors in the Covid-19 era.MethodsThis study aims to design a remote monitoring system for sleep apnea to ensure patient safety and ease the workload of doctors. Our study focuses on a novel portable real-time low-cost sleep apnea monitoring system utilizing the GSM network (GSM Shield Sim900a). Proposed system is a remote monitoring and patient tracking system to detect the apnea event in real time, and to provide information of the sleep position, pulse, and respiratory and oxygen saturation to the medical specialists (SpO2) by establishing a direct contact. As soon as an abnormal condition is detected in the light of these parameters, the condition is reported (instant or in the form of short reports after sleep) to the patient relatives, the doctor’s mobile telephone or to the emergency medical centers (EMCs) through a GSM network to handle the case depending on the patient’s emergency condition.ResultsA study group was formed of six patients for monitoring apnea events (three males and three females) between the ages of 20 and 60. The patients in the study group have sleep apnea (SA) in different grades. All the apnea events were detected, and all the patients were successfully alerted. Also, the patient parameters were successfully sent to all patient relatives. Patients who could not get out of apnea were called through the CALL feature, and they were informed about their ongoing apnea event and told that intervention was necessary. The proposed system is tested on six patients. The beginning moment of apnea was successfully detected and the SMS/CALL feature was successfully activated without delay. During the testing, it has been observed that while some of the patients start breathing after the first SMS, some others needed the second or the third SMS. According to the measurement result, the maximum breathless time is 46 s among the patients, and a SMS is sent every 15 s. In addition, in cases where the patient was breathless for a long time, the CALL feature was actively sought from the relatives of the patient and enabled him to intervene. The proposed monitoring system could be used in both clinical and home settings.ConclusionsThe monitoring of a patient in real time allows to intervene in any unexpected circumstances about the patient. The proposed work uses an acceleration sensor as a reliable method of the sleep apnea for monitoring and prevention. The developed device is more economical, comfortable, and convenient than existing systems not only for the patients but also for the doctors. The patients can easily use this device in their home environment, so which could yield a more comfortable, easy to use, cost-effective, and long-term breathing monitoring system for healthcare applications.Graphical abstract

Screening of the Mobile Phones of Resident Doctors for Microbial Contamination in Tertiary Health Care Center

Background: Use of mobile phones for communication is increasingly becoming important today. Mobile phones can carry various harmful microbes and can acts as exogenous source of infection in hospital acquired infections. Aims: To screen the mobile phones of resident doctors for microbial contamination in tertiary health care center. Materials and Methods: swab's were taken from 70 resident doctor's mobile phones by using sterile cotton swab and inoculated on MacConkey agar and Blood agar. Organisms isolated were processed as per standard protocol. Results: out of the 70 mobile phone swabs 62 swabs (88.5%) were contaminated with microorganisms. Eighty-eight microorganisms were isolated from 70 mobile phones. Among 88 isolates, coagulase negative staphylococci were 42(47.73%), Staphylococcus aureus 18(20.45%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter, Micrococci were 6(6.82%) each, Klebsiella pneumonia and Enterococcus were 3(3.41%) each. 2 isolates of diphtheroids; Escherichia coli and Bacillus with 1 isolate each. Conclusion: Mobile phones can act as exogenous source of microorganisms and can spread hospital acquired infections. Hence proper infection control practices like proper hand washing should be routinely practiced.

Design and Development of Real Time Patient Monitoring System with GSM Technology

Technology keeps evolving every second. Humans receive all the essential information with just one touch. Be it the weather forecast or ordering any grocery or communicating with one's peers, everything happens so easily and efficiently. It is undoubtedly user friendly. When the same technology associates itself with the medical equipment it becomes easier to fetch and process the patient's data in real time. It also helps to make several life-saving, spontaneous decisions for the critical care. This paper talks about the patient monitoring system. The physiological parameters of the patient are continuously monitored in real time using sensors. The data that is obtained from the sensor is then sent to an Arduino Uno microcontroller where it is analyzed. If the patient's data differs from the required threshold values, an emergency message is sent to the assigned doctor's mobile. This is done using the GSM module which is interfaced with the microcontroller. Verifying the system in software is done using Proteus.

E-health monitoring system enhancement with Gaussian mixture model

In order to enhance the healthcare system, we have designed and developed a system prototype which remotely monitors patient's vital parameters by using mobile based android application. Proposed E-health care system collects patient's biological and personal information with the corresponding vital parameters and stores this Meta data information into the health care database servers. The distributed servers are connected with GSP system. So the extracted information from the server is directly feed to the doctor's mobile device as well as to the patient's mobile devices in a presentable format. This system also uses Frontline SMS as an SMS service which is used to send SMS to the doctor's mobile device automatically, when any one of the patient's vital parameter goes out of normal range. In this paper, we present the GMM (Gaussian mixture model) based on extracted features of the patient information and assign it to the specialized doctor. In this work, we have shown that by GMM based algorithm efficiently balances the patient load to the doctor. This novel approach enhances the E-health monitoring system for normal situations as well as in the case of Natural disaster. The proposed load balancing approach gives relief to the patient for unnecessary long delay to receive medical advice. The presented result in this work shown that, the doctors from all category and specialization are loaded rationally and uniformly. According to our knowledge GMM based approach is the new additional component to enhance the E-health care system.

Electrical Simulation of Human Cardio-Vascular System and Real-Time Tele-Monitoring of Cardiac Status of the Patients

This paper proposes an electrical model of human cardio-vascular system for the diagnosis of various cardiac diseases, like endocarditis, atherosclerosis, etc. Here, Atherosclerosis has been dealt with specifically. It is the hardening and narrowing of arteries, which slowly blocks the arteries and put blood flow at risk. An innovative electrical model has been developed which is analogous to physiological structure of human cardio-vascular system. This model comprises of passive electrical components (R, L & C), 555-Timer, opamp, and potentiometer. This electrical model has been simulated in PSPICE and two different time-domain responses are generated, for qualitative analysis of cardiac disorders. For analyzing the disease, authors have considered its different qualitative stages, e.g. good and poor, for productive analysis. Deviation of responses from healthy cardiac output enables detection of the cardiac problem (atherosclerosis). Authors have further extended the work for real-time transmission of patient's cardiac status to a distantly located doctor. A micro-controller based device has been designed that receives the cardiac pulses from an optical sensor, and under abnormal condition, it communicates the information to the patient's mobile phone via XBEE transceiver. The patient's mobile phone is preloaded with a JAVA based software application. It receives the data from the transceiver and automatically transmits it to distantly located doctor's mobile phone.

Viable Investigations and Real-Time Recitation of Enhanced ECG-Based Cardiac Telemonitoring System for Homecare Applications: A Systematic Evaluation

A light and portable wireless biosignal retrieving system has always been a medical dream. This proposed wireless-type biosignal alerting system aims at designing and developing a module that detects the abnormal interpretations in the PQRST complex (electrocardiography) and heart rate of a patient in advance, gives a self-warning ring to the patient, and also sends a short message service warning to the doctor's mobile phone through the Global System for Mobile Communication. This system is a solution to supplement the limitations in conventional clinic examination such as the difficulty in capturing rare events, out-of-hospital monitoring of patients' heart status, and the immediate dissemination of the physician's instruction to the patient. These study results have immense consequence in researching, finding, and preventing epidemics in the cardiovascular system for the entire world.

Novel methods of faster cardiovascular diagnosis in wireless telecardiology

With the rapid development wireless technologies, mobile phones are gaining acceptance to become an effective tool for cardiovascular monitoring. However, existing technologies have limitations in terms of efficient transmission of compressed ECG over text messaging communications like SMS and MMS. In this paper, we first propose an ECG compression algorithm which allows lossless transmission of compressed ECG over bandwidth constrained wireless link. Then, we propose several algorithms for cardiovascular abnormality detection directly from the compressed ECG maintaining end to end security, patient privacy while offering the benefits of faster diagnosis. Next, we show that our mobile phone based cardiovascular monitoring solution is capable of harnessing up to 6.72 times faster diagnosis compared to existing technologies. As the decompression time on a doctor's mobile phone could be significant, our method will be highly advantageous in patient wellness monitoring system where a doctor has to read and diagnose from compressed ECGs of several patients assigned to him. Finally, we successfully implemented the prototype system by establishing mobile phone based cardiovascular patient monitoring.

Neurology Diagnostics Security and Terminal Adaptation for PocketNeuro Project

This paper presents new approaches of medical information security and terminal mobile phone adaptation for the PocketNeuro project. The latter term refers to a project created for the management of neurological diseases. It consists of transmitting information about patients ("desk of patients") to a doctor's mobile phone during a visit and examination of a patient. These new approaches for the PocketNeuro project were analyzed in terms of medical information security and adaptation of the diagnostic images to the doctor's mobile phone. Images were extracted from a DICOM library. Matlab and its library were used as software to test our approaches and to validate our results. Experiments performed on a database of 30 256 x 256 pixel-sized neuronal medical images indicated that our new approaches for PocketNeuro project are valid and support plans for large-scale studies between French and Swiss hospitals using secured connections.

A four-year study of telephone support for oncology patients using a non-supervised call centre.

A non-supervised call centre was used to allow oncology patients to contact their personal doctors 24 hours a day. Incoming patient calls to the centre were automatically routed to the doctor's mobile phone or office telephone. Over four years, an average of 407 calls were made each year, by an average of 274 oncology patients. The average number of emergency hospital visits was 24 per year (0.09 per patient), compared with 42 per year (0.16 per patient) during the year before the telephone service began. The average number of outreach visits was 783 (2.9 per patient) per year during the study, in comparison with 722 (2.8 per patient) before it began. The average number of non-emergency hospital admissions was 41 (0.15 per patient) per year in comparison with 42 (0.17 per patient) before the study. Calls were short (typically 3-5 min) and the majority (88%) were made on the patient's initiative. Outreach patients in receipt of chemotherapy were the principal users (making 88% of all calls). Excluding the initial investment cost, the income received was approximately the same as the running costs of the call centre in two of the three years for which data were available.