Value your health information

This week I met someone who couldn’t speak because of a stroke. For weeks he was unable to say anything at all. The condition, known as aphasia, has some chance of improvement but many people never recover. I remembered hearing about the iPad being used as a communication tool so I decided to see what was on the App Store.

It turns out that there are lots of apps available that could help in this situation. Some have icons like a tick or an x, for Yes or No. Others allow you to type with a full keyboard. Some are inbetween with a mix of both tools. But there are added problems – it takes time to get used to a touchscreen, particularly for older people who are used to using push buttons. Also stroke patients can have visual problems and sensory problems where they can ignore once side of their body, and also anything they look at – like the screen.

All these things are surmountable and it looks like the iPad can genuinely be useful for stroke patients. It was really interesting to read one family’s experience here:

http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/09/30/using-the-ipad-2-in-stroke-recovery-%E2%80%93-my-family%E2%80%99s-experience/

A team in Madrid, Spain have produced a T-shirt which monitors the wearer’s physiological parameters (as well as their location). The information is sent wirelessly in realtime to the servers. http://www.epractice.eu/en/news/5315198

This sounds great but I can’t see that these developments are sustainable. Who wants to have to wear a hospital T-shirt all the time? Even if you are using it for home monitoring, nobody will want to keep it on. What happens when you take a shower? Or if you take it off for bed, or a swim?

The solution is to keep the technology independent of the patient. Teams should work on systems where someone can be monitored non-invasively, and remotely – i.e. just by being in a room. Take the example of the older person living alone who we want to monitor in their own home. Maybe they have some memory problems – a wearable monitor just won’t work here. We need to be able to keep track of their physiology without putting an electrode near them. It’s not inconceivable that heart rate could be measured using something along the lines of radar, and position by a couple of cameras. We want a system to alert us if an older person falls, or their heart stops, or they stop moving.

The bottom line is that designers needs to consider the practicality of the situation before implementing solutions that won’t work. The t-short model has some uses, but we need to think outside of the box here and take human behaviour into account.

The flipside of this is that someone needs to be monitoring the system. It’s no use if a computer sends off alerts to say somebody is in trouble, if nobody is watching. If your heart stops, you need an immediate and effective response for there to be any chance of survival. This sad case from a hospital in Cork, Ireland shows the potential for disaster:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1007/1224305390105.html