Microsoft’s Senior Director of Worldwide Health Bill Crounse just posted an article on his HealthBlog about the Wound Technology Network, which is a nationwide physician network that uses Windows Mobile-based phones for remote wound care.
“Every clinician understands the challenges associated with wound care,” Crounse writes. “The process is slow, time-consuming, complex, and expensive. Non-healing, ulcerations and wounds are associated with a variety of chronic conditions including diabetes, peripheral vascular disease and stasis. Non-healing wounds are also associated with immobility due to aging, injury, paralysis, or other co-morbid conditions. Many of these patients end up being hospitalized to treat secondary infections, or to provide the intensive regime needed to heal chronic ulcerations or wounds. Hospitalization itself is risky as it exposes these susceptible patients to dangers they might not otherwise 
encounter in their home environment such as MRSA.”
WTN’s Windows Mobile phones help the caregivers capture information via the phone’s camera at the point of care. The data can then be transmitted and incorporated into the medical record for continuity of care. WTN can then support caregiver collaboration with two-way audio and video streaming at the bedside.
Check out Crounse’s post to download Microsoft’s video on WTN.
May 7th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Have you actually watched the video Brian? To my mind the devil is in the detail…
Shouldn’t this device be designed for the infection control challenges that it would face from being used within a healthcare setting or, worse still, a diverse range of different patients homes? I checked out the HTC site and it doesn’t appear that this device has quite high profile gaps and wouldn’t even take too kindly to germicidal cleaning sprays/wipes.
Above all that though I really hope no healthcare professional has to ever suffer that user experience…
…imagine having to stand there in rubber gloves holding that miniscule pointing needle – HTC designed it to be a touchscreen and the UI should capitalise on that
…is there any benefit to be had from using the clumsy headset/adapter combination as seen in the video (in your second image)
…imagine being the health visitor who has to relay the answers to a “wound care specialist who will ask 75 questions related to every wound” every time they attend a patient
…it appears that the wound is being dressed by two carers. One to do the dressing the other to hold the video mobile. Is this necessary?
…who’s terrible idea was it to share a single UI for both the mobile and the PC desktop?
…Why are they using a proprietary wound care EHR (what’s wrong with MS HealthVault?)
…Video Quality is terrible… in the UK and Ireland we have been able to conduct higher quality Mobile Video Calling over 3G networks for years. This includes things like live picture capture/sharing with the native software being shipped on the Symbian mobiles such as the Nokia N95.
It’s no surprise that the Apple iPhone is running away as the favored mHealth device in the US… For mHealth to be taken seriously Microsoft should have worked a bit harder before releasing this video especially after they’ve set the bar so high in their previous and rather fun “Future of Healthcare” Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V35Kv6-ZNGA
August 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
[...] Mobihealthnews has written about mobile-powered remote wound management care, which makes use of mobile phone camera photos, in the past (the picture above is from an article we wrote about Microsoft’s Windows Mobile-based remote wound care management network.) [...]