Health

The Department of Health in the Philippines have tested a recent upgrade to the countries SPEED (Surveillance in Post Extreme Emergencies and Disasters) system to provide data on disease outbreaks during natural emergencies.

SPEED enables health officials and workers to use mobile phone text messages to send reports on communicable and non-communicable health conditions, and to monitor health trends.

Until recently staff at Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust have been spending up to 45 minutes trying to track down vital medical equipment. The Trust is now trialling a real-time location tracking system to tag items, such as cardiac monitors, portable ventilators and specialist wheelchairs.

The tags communicate with a web-based system that can be accessed by clinical staff who can then trace the movement of devices around the hospital.

Stroke experts at Newcastle University have developed a video game to help patients recover their motor functions within the comfort of their own homes.

‘Circus challenge,’ the first game to be produced in a planned series, allows a player to try such activities as lion taming, juggling, plate spinning and flying the trapeze.

Kinect technology is now being used not solely for gaming but in the medical field too.

In a live Trial, Doctors at Brighton Sussex University Hospital operated the touchless technology in conjunction with an already in use 3D imaging system used for complex aneurysm procedures.

The Kinect technology allows the surgeon to move the images around without touching the screen thus avoiding infection control issues.

Myontec, an innovative Finnish company are marketing underwear embedded with sensor monitoring muscle activity. Collected data is sent to a computer to enable the wearer to analyse their rate of activity.

The clothing technology was recently used for a study to address the amount of time wearers spent sedentary and the effects on their health.

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This year sees marked innovation in the sector of Health and Fitness. Valencell, an American company has produced a set of earphones that monitor biometric data including heart rate and oxygen consumption, the results are displayed via the user’s iPhone or Android device.