Intel's brilliant medical 'Health Guide' launches in Australia

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 24 March 2010 13:19

Your IT - Home IT

Aiming to dramatically improve in-home patient care, especially for the elderly and those with chronic illnesses, Intel's new 'Health Guide' will make a real difference in easing the burden on patients, nurses, doctors and the medical/hospital system and taking home health into the 21st century.

 

The headline of Intel's press release sums it up quite nicely, with Intel delivering a 'next-generation remote patient monitoring system' that 'enables more personalised care management for chronic and age-related conditions'.

Called the 'Intel Health Guide', the device is a customised x86-based touch-screen computer, with built-in video camera for live video calls to nurses or doctors, that helps patients to monitor themselves and have this information collected and available for your medical professionals to review.

Given that information can be collected multiple times per day, it allows nurses and doctors to have a robust history of patient conditions, giving far more visibility into a patient's medical condition over time, rather than waiting for a once-per-week doctor's visit, or an emergency situation to tell the story.

The device can measure blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, weight, the amount of exercise you've done (which you need to enter manually), other records that can be entered manually (see page 2 for much more detail on all the features and functions); it can deliver videos and other educational materials at the point of a 'teachable moment' when patients are experiencing issues, and the live videoconference element gives greater peace of mind to patients. There's even a calendar within so patients can record and know when doctor's appointments and home visits are due.

While the 'Health Guide' is primarily aimed at the elderly and those with chronic health conditions, there's clearly no reason why we all couldn't one day have such a device to monitor our health status, whether that information is collected for personal use or to be explicitly shared with your doctors and nurses.

While the technology has been in use for the last 18 months in the US, and also trialled in the UK, the technology has now come to Australia and has had great success in its local trials.

Although the hardware that is the Health Guide is still the same hardware that the US has been using for the past year and a half, Intel explained that the software within had gone through several revisions and continues being a great success overseas.

Intel states that its Health Guide has been 'accepted for supply in Australia by the Therapeutics Goods Administration', with Australian company 'Healthe' the first local reseller.

We also learned that, as an ageing population, the over 85 segment of the population is accelerating and is responsible for the use of an ever growing amount of hospital care, much of which can be done far better through the use of the Intel Health Guide.

The age group of 65 to 74 will also benefit greatly from the device, delivering better patient outcomes and avoiding hospital and doctor's office visits for standard checks that can now be done at home, under the watchful eye of nurses and doctors as needed.

Much more info on page 2, please read on!