Mobile phones for public health

Video: Nokia & mHealth in emerging markets | mobihealthnews

Here’s a video (via MobileActive.org) that showcases Nokia’s Data Gathering application for the E71. The video shows the Amazonas’ State Health Department in Brazil using the devices and application to monitor and treat outbreaks of dengue fever. In developing markets one of the key problems for caregivers and public health workers is recording and managing data collection on health issues for large populations. The application featured below shows the type of technology replacing the clipboard abroad, but similar technologies are being deployed across hospitals in the U.S. like mobile clinical assistants (MCA) that sync up to a hospital’s EMR.

- HMIS for India-

Image via Wikipedia

India launches health management info portal : iGovernment
New Delhi: The Government of India on Tuesday launched the Health Management Information System (HMIS) portal to convert local health data into real time useful information, management indicators and trends which could be displayed graphically in the reports.

Launching the portal, Health and Family Welfare Secretary Naresh Dayal said that real time data provided by the web-enabled technologies will strengthen the monitoring and would enable policy makers to make better decisions for public health delivery.

The new system envisages enhancing the information flow at various levels and providing useful and timely inputs for programme development, monitoring and midcourse interventions in the
policies. Recognising the need for an information base, one of the core strategies of the strengthening capacities for data collection, assessment and review for evidence based planning,
monitoring and supervision, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has established this dedicated portal for all public health related information.

The HMIS portal captures data to be collected as per the revised HMIS formats on a web-based system at the District level so that the primary data can be easily aggregated and the information and reports flow quickly to the state head quarters and the Ministry.

The system also enables information to be entered for each facility so that MIS reporting can be of a better quality.

The application has been developed by the Ministry in technical collaboration with iBILT Technologies who will also be providing maintenance and support to the application for the next five years.

The portal will be generating unique intelligence reports using the advanced SAS Data Warehousing platform and explore and establish new linkages and advanced analysis for policy initiatives.

-Obvious uses of data and technology-

Scientists to use satellite imagery to predict disease outbreaks

At last, scientists are correlating what they know and what they see to come up with new ways to fight diseases.

Seen from a distance, both figuratively and literally, it is ridiculously easy to predict an epidemic or infectious disease outbreak.All you need is good dependable information about the current environment at the location. Tie this up with what we already know about the infectious agent life-cycle and the disease process and Voila!- We have our own Crystal Ball.

Scientists now plan to use satellite imagery to predict some seasonal and climate dependent infectious diseases like Cholera. Similar models can later be developed for other diseases like Hepatitis A, Malaria and Leptospirosis.

Hoping more money is spent on such life-saving use of Technology in preventive medicine.
Read the original news item here

–Data for Doctors–

E-Health Insider :: From data to information to transformation

Information is power. Everywhere.
Information is made up of chunks of data put together into a meaningful structure.

As health care professionals, we produce lots of data everyday when we treat our patients. It includes the patient”s past habits, family history, past diseases, current symptoms, response to certain drugs, reactions to drugs……and on and on.

We need to be able to collect and collate all this data so as to help us in making better decisions in the future. The currently followed practise commonly is — we treat all the patients according to what we were taught in medical school–.

But illness and disease don’t remain static. They evolve everyday. They follow the path of least resistance. Whenever a disease finds a path not blocked by doctors, it pursues rapidly down that path.And we doctors are left guarding only the fixed doorways that we were taught of in Medical school ( or even later, via medical journals)

The only way to stay in the game is to continuously monitor the evolution of the disease by real-time/continuous data gathering and monitoring. This helps us spot very early trends in disease evolution and “block” those paths and escape routes for all diseases.

This article here provides some very good examples and methods of data capturing for clinicians. I hope all doctors in India soon realize the importance of data gathering and analysis in their day-to-day practice.

Read more.