Innovation Showcased at Expo

The Military Health System (MHS) at the SmartAmerica Challenge Expo held in Washington D.C on June 11, joined forces with academics and industry to demonstrate how electronic devices can automatically share and analyze information.

The Expo is the result of the SmartAmerica Challenge created as part of the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to demonstrate the possibilities of cyber-physical systems that are often called the “Internet of Things”.

MHS participated in several demonstrations at the Expo. The military’s Closed Loop Healthcare team at the Expo demonstrated how a hypothetical elderly patient with high blood pressure was put on a beta-blocker to reduce his blood pressure after he went to the hospital with a shoulder injury.

At that point, the data on the patient’s blood pressure was transmitted to a clinical decision support system to observe that the blood pressure fell briefly but yet dangerously low whenever the medication was given. The computer called up the patient’s genomic information and found a gene variation that indicated that the patient may have an abnormal response to beta blockers. The doctor can then be contacted with the information and can decide whether to change the medication.

MHS also showed how the internet can help medics and emergency room doctors diagnose and treat brain injury cases. The demonstration team explained how brain injuries can receive better care when multiple diagnostics and computer-driven analysis are used and then at that point, the patient’s records can automatically be sent to the emergency room.

The demonstrations at the Expo showed how healthcare can be coordinated through emergency systems, transportation grids, healthcare information systems, smart hospitals, medical device networks, and how effectively information can be relayed to smart intensive care units.