Ramblings from an Automation Mad Man
By Jerry Maldonado - VP Business Unit Strategy, Customer Lifecycle Solutions.
It was not long ago when a TV show uttered the words “space … The final frontier…These are …” … well, you know the rest. Star Trek, the multi-generational iconic Sci-Fi show has thrilled audiences and folks from all walks of life. It has shown us the best and worst of humanity and for me personally, the cool possibility of future technologies. In fact, I would like to toss my hat in the ring and say that Star Trek is responsible for ushering us into the technology age that we now call the Internet of things.
Think about it, by the 25th century, everything is interconnected. Pads of the Star Trek show are tablets of today’s world, connected via wireless communication to the network, or in our case the internet. It was in the show where we would see a desktop display for direct access into systems and controls, and multiple pads for data display. Is today’s world much different than that? Look at your desk, I bet you might have a laptop, desktop, tablet and smart phone right at your fingertips. Oh, and under that pile of papers is that a reader or game boy?
So you see in my vision, star trek has shown us the possibility of the future, as far as technology might be concerned. In my recent trips to the Emergency room for example, I saw the beginning of some of the technologies shown in the show. While a Bio Bed or the use of hand held scanners might not be common place to see inside a patient, one can easily start to extrapolate the possibilities of making this technology a reality. In fact if we look at the possibilities that we see in the show start trek with what is available today, you will be amazed at how close we really are to it.
In Star Trek, most devices are already interconnected and provide invaluable instant feedback on a patient’s condition. In today’s hospitals, most devices are stand alone and provide singular function. That’s why you can walk into a person’s room for example and see multiple machines hooked up all blinking numbers and symbols. All of these separate devices need to be checked manually and then entered periodically into the medical records section of the patients file. You have devices that monitor heart rate, breathing, pulse oxygen levels, blood pressure, temperature and more. With the increase of IOT technology it is not too farfetched to see these devices begin to tie into to the medical network and then to the medical records of a patient. A quick fix for today’s system would be to use a bar code to scan a device , the software could recognize said device and then scanning the patients bracelet would tie the device to the medical record of the person . This is a procedure commonly used today for administering medicine as well as other items for patient care. Once attached to a patient’s medical record, data can be stored on an as needed basis or simply displayed as a pass through for the patient at a nursing station or doctor retrieval location. But of course I am thinking that we can do much better than this. Bio Bed to the rescue!
So the other part of the Star trek version of healthcare is the scanner. This is a portable hand held device that allows the Doctor to look at the inner workings of a patient. In today’s world, if you need to look inside, a portable x-ray machine rolls up to your bedside and bing bang boo , the doctor is reviewing your chest x-rays to see what’s going on inside you . Granted if you are mobile you need to be walked or wheeled to some of the more prestigious machines to look inside you. But for a quick look, an X-ray is the way to go. Maybe we could look at some sort of bed function that could be leveraged to perform a look inside maybe ultrasound, maybe a bed that allows for x-ray digital plates to be slid in between the patient and the mattress in such a way as to not harm or move the patient. Again it’s Bio Bed to the rescue.
Today beds are dumb - I mean, not so smart. But what if we changed that? What if we made the bed the smart device like the mobile device we carry around today? Today’s beds provide little more than weight on a patient , they provide for flexibility in moving patients and supporting them , but when it comes to raw data collection or useful information they fall way short. The way beds are used in the hospital today is that they have remote heart monitoring devices that basically use a small device and wires connected sensors and a box which transmits heart information to a central station. What if we moved the box to the bed and put in senor pads ,that are self-powered or can be recharged with wireless technology once a day?
Now the bed has the smarts to disseminate the data to locations of interest. Since the bed is the receiving station, even sensors with small disposal batteries would provide several days of information gathering. These sensors could be fitted for continuous glucose monitoring, maybe time lapsed EKGs or other data that can be routed to specific stations for correlation and doctor update. Imagine a smaller pulse ox device that is wearable and can send updates based on medical staff input as well as updating the patient on their mobile device. Even items like the dreaded vitals check. This would be great for those patients on the mend who are just trying to rest and nurses have to come in every so often and document your vitals. This system could be used to provide more continuous monitoring and allow the nurses to do their rounds more efficiently while not disturbing the patients. Visual checks would still be the course of action but now it’s not a beeping noise that alerts the nursing station it’s the nursing station that gets alerted to any changes in your conditions as opposed to hearing a beep.
For mobility the bed can be hooked up to an uninterruptible power supply system with standby power to support additional monitors as well as equipment for maintaining circulation in the body or other needs. Central monitoring of the bed as a standard asset would allow for the IT department to monitor the health and wellbeing of the device. They would also have to monitor all the devices connected to it as well and secure the data stream and any un-authorized activities. Failing devices could be discovered early and a technician dispatched to repair or replace the device before things get bad. Inventory information could give insurance companies better ways of tracking care and provide hospitals additional ways with how to bill. The bed could also be granted mobility rights for labs and room moves and any other needs thereby allowing for telemetry movement as well as medical record updates to new locations on a quicker more efficient manner.
Adding internet access or treating the bed as a mobile hotspot connected to a guest network, would mean this portion of the bed is totally isolated from the medical network side of the bed and would provide patients and guest enhanced benefits for entertainment, communication, and for folks like me more information to educate on the conditions that they are either being afflicted with or their loved ones. Like the connected car, the hospital bed becomes the connection point for top notch medical care.
So Star trek may have set the goal, but with a little imagination and the right push we can boldly go where no bed has gone before.
Follow the Ramblings from an Automated Mad Man every other Wednesday. Did you miss the last post? Read it here: Time Save Lives