According to an article appearing in TATRC Times www.tatrc.org, TATRC’s Mobile Health Innovation Center (mHIC) is working on a new study at Clemson University www.clemson.edu in South Carolina, titled “Enhancing mHealth Technology in the Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Environment for Chronic Care Patients.”
The study will be conducted in the PCMH at the Mike O’Callaghan Federal Medical Center at Nellis AFB www.lasvegas.va.gov and at the Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma Washington www.mamc.amedd.army.mil.
The project will work to improve the current mobile healthcare environment and to study how the mCare mobile application is working in the PCMH environment. This knowledge will help expand bi-directional data exchange with the Military Health System’s Secure Messaging System to include embedded PHR functionality.
The study will also look at the self-managed behaviors of patients with type 2 diabetes in the PCMH environment by using biosensors. The biosensors can include a variety of home monitoring devices such as activity monitors, weight scales, blood pressure cuffs, and glucometers. The use of these biosensors will make it possible for patients to transmit automatically to a secure mobile health system.
The data from these devices would then be transmitted back to the mobile healthcare secure system and be available to the patient’s assigned PCMH case manager and primary care physician through a secure web portal dashboard interface.
Also, TATRC has been working on a new medical simulation technology called “BioGears® http://biogearsengine.com. This simulation technology is a physiology engine that simulates how the body works on a practical level in real-time through software.
The engine simulates breathing, circulation of blood, kidneys, and other organs along with medications. The simulator makes it possible to track virtually a bleeding casualty, or an athlete having an asthma attack, or a teen undergoing anesthesia. Information is obtained on the virtual patient’s alertness, heart, breathing, and blood chemistry.
This project conceived by Thomas Talbot, MD, a TATRC Scientist explains, “We wondered if we could come up with a human physiology model that was fast enough to work in real-time and just accurate enough for medical training.”
Right now, the engine requires computer programming skills in order to use it. Dr. Talbot sees the next logical step is to make BioGears® directly usable by non-programmers such as clinicians and students where it could be used for medical training, research purposes, or for STEM education.