Student measurement mobile application developed by the University of Toronto.
Of the more than three million applications for phones and other mobile devices (e.g. smartwatches) that exist on the various platforms, more than 100,000 are aimed at health and medicine, according to the Institute for Health Informatics. In this storehouse, some useful ones coexist with others of lesser efficiency. However, their existence underscores the ability of mobile applications to monitor and promote individual health, change habits, foster doctor-patient relationships, monitor a disease, or store critical data for a diagnosis. Five scientific investigations over the past two months have focused on the potential of these tools to design phone systems or mobile devices to save or improve lives.
Anticipate heart failure by voice. William Abraham of Ohio State University presented a voice analysis application for heart failure outpatients at the European Society of Cardiology meeting last month. According to Abraham, “The current treatment protocol is simply not good enough to keep heart failure patients out of the hospital.” “The system tested,” he explains, “is able to predict 80% of heart failure worsening. Speech analysis can be used in conjunction with other clinical information to change treatments before a patient’s condition worsens, thereby avoiding hospitalization.”
In people with heart failure, the heart doesn’t pump blood around the body as well as it should, and the kidneys don’t remove fluids properly, and excess fluid pools in the lungs or legs. During development of the application, 180 patients repeated five selected phrases each morning before breakfast. The system compares the daily recordings with the reference versions and warns when it detects pulmonary congestion. As Abraham explains, “The system establishes a baseline for each patient during a period of stability and detects changes in speech over time that indicate the presence of fluid in the lungs.”
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This model complements cardiac rhythm monitoring with digital devices to detect asymptomatic arrhythmias. One-third of patients with atrial fibrillation have no symptoms, and early diagnosis can enable appropriate treatment to reduce the risk of stroke. There are EKG patches, smartwatches, forearm bands, chest straps, rings, headphones, face sensors or fingertip apps. “Before using any heart rate or rhythm monitoring technology, users should agree with their doctor which device to use, for how long, and what to do if the device gives an alert,” warns Emma Svennberg, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm and Author of a Guide to Arrhythmia Detection and Treatment Devices. In this sense, he states: “People need to know how to react to the results that a device throws up when they have to go to the emergency room or can wait for a regular appointment.”
What your students are saying about possible neurological problems. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a smartphone app to identify signs of Alzheimer’s, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by taking close-up pictures of the eyes. and other neurological disorders.
Unveiled last May, the app is a pupil gauge that uses a near-infrared facial recognition camera built into newer smartphones, along with a traditional selfie camera, to pinpoint a person’s pupil size and thus assess a person’s cognitive state, as that part of the human brain changes eye enlarges when a person performs a difficult cognitive task or hears an unexpected sound
The measurements generated by the phone are comparable to those of pupillometers, the traditional method. Colin Barry, who was recognized for his research, states that “this technology can bring neurological screening outside of clinical laboratory settings and into the home. It opens the door for new smartphone apps to detect and monitor potential health problems.”
Diagnose jaundice with mobile camera. Jaundice is characterized by a yellowish discoloration of the skin, mucous membranes or the whites of the eyes (sclera). It is common in newborns and is generally harmless. However, this change caused by bilirubin can affect the brain and cause death (114,000 newborns die each year worldwide), hearing loss, neurological disorders and developmental delays (178,000 cases of disability annually). The key is early diagnosis, something that is common in developed countries and is part of pediatric protocols.
Terence Leung from University College London (UCL) developed the smartphone app neoSCB, which detects severe jaundice in newborns by scanning their eyes. The system analyzes images captured with a smartphone camera to quantify yellowing of the sclera to enable earlier diagnosis of neonatal jaundice requiring treatment that is more accurate than in-person observation. In the experimental phases, it was able to locate 74 of the 79 cases identified in 336 newborns, only two fewer than the conventional transcutaneous bilirubinometer method.
According to Leung, “The study shows that the neoSCB app is as good as currently recommended commercial devices for detecting newborns with severe jaundice, but the app only requires a smartphone that costs less than a tenth of the commercial device. We hope that once our technology is widely deployed, it can be used to save the lives of newborns in parts of the world that do not have access to expensive screening equipment.”
hope in the face of drug addiction. The increase in cases of opioid overdose detected by the medical and academic center Virginia UVA Health has prompted researchers of this institution to develop the HOPE application (acronym for Heal Overcome Persist Endure, which forms the name that means hope in Spanish ) with the aim of creating patients to provide vital support.
HOPE facilitates contact with professionals and, through anonymous messaging, relationships with other sufferers to “share experiences with people who understand the challenges they face”. The evidence, published in Addiction Science & Clinical Practice and Patient Education and Counseling, showed that a group of patients who are at high risk of disengaging from their treatment programs stayed with them for six months after using the app , and kept them active even after the treatments were completed.
Rebecca Dillingham, one of the app’s developers, explains, “We had patients design it, and this helped create a welcoming portal that facilitates continuity of care.” A similar app, PositiveLinks, was developed for AIDS developed in patients.
Both make it easy to monitor prescribed medications and patient mood. They also provide targeted recovery content and monitor narcotic use and patients’ experiences in the detoxification process. Kelly Schorling, a social worker who was involved with Hope, says, “We were able to use the data to provide more personalized care and address the treatment needs of each patient who enrolled in the program.”
A nutritionist on your phone. Research published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research shows that the eNutri application, developed by human nutrition and biomedical engineering researchers at the University of Reading, enables healthier eating. Study participants improved their diet by 6% compared to the control group, who only received general guidance and did not have the application.
The eNutri model uses the Healthy Diet Score parameters to assess intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, red and processed meats. Based on the score obtained, the application recommends recommended eating habits for each user.
Roz Fallaize, a nutritionist and researcher in the Department of Food Sciences and Nutrition at the University of Reading, says the group who had access to automated and personalized dietary advice “improved the quality of the diet significantly”.
In this regard, he states: “The ideal is to have a nutritionist or nutritionist who offers individual nutritional advice, but this is often only available to people with health problems or financial means. Also, there is growing interest in nutrition apps and web services, but many business apps are more focused on weight loss or calorie counting than healthy eating.”
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