BPN 1727: A video floor for physiotherapy

In January my bionic system went for a hip revision into the medical garage. Next day you are out of the hospital bed ready for rehabilitation walkies with crutches or behind a rollator. And after another night, you are out of the hospital. At that point your rehabilitation exercises for improving walking starts. At first it might be painful, awkward and boring, but walking will improve over the weeks. However rehabilitation might become more entertaining with a higtech led floor.

The led floor is already a common facility in entertainment studios and are used in shows like the Euro songfestival or Victoria’s Secret presentations. But now a led floor of 3 meters by 3 meters has been installed in the Design Lab of the University Twente. Yet to this floor sensors have been added to generate data about the walking habits and to measure the progress of the rehabilitation process. The floor has become one big interactive touchscreen. It has been developed by the company ledGo, which so far sells the floors to the entertainment market.

The led floor is not just meant for boring training walkies. With the video floor lights and colours can be interactively generated. So it can be used creatively for serious/social games and experience. The floor can be used by one person, but can also be used in a game for two. In this way patients can start moving, while their data are generated , compared and analysed. The play feature had already been researched in cooperation with the Rehabilitation Center De Hoogstraat in Utrecht, be it on a led path. But with the square floor games and especially multi-person games become more interesting, while movements will become more varied.

The led floor facility for so called gait rehabilitation is now under development  and being researched for use in the e-health sector. For the time being it will be used by rehabilitation centers with patients who rehabilitate from accidents and strokes. But the market is wider. Fitness centers and private practices of physiotherapists  will be candidates for the vertical interactive touch screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0GvzSxcjDQ

BPN 1566 World Summit Award Winners 2011 Category 2

"WSA - Turning the United Nations Targets on the Information Society regarding Local Content into Global Action towards the 2015 Review !"

Category 2:e-Health & Environment

2004 SPARX New Zealand
2031 COLLAPSUS Netherlands
2039 EPI Life Singapore
2040 Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Digital Museum China
3012 Verdeate.com Colombia

SPARX, New Zeeland, University of Auckland

URL: http://www.frozenflameweb.com/sparxmain.html
Description: By the age of 18 a quarter of young people have suffered from clinical  depression and a massive three quarters of them never get any help. There are good therapies, but they can be expensive, there is a shortage of therapists and young people may be reluctant to talk about their problems. For the current generation of "digital natives" computers may provide a solution. SPARX is a computerised self-help programme designed to deliver cognitive behavioural therapy, one of the best psychological treatments available for depression. SPARX is an animated 3D game where users learn real-life skills by solving challenges to rid a fantasy world from gloom and
negativity. It was developed by therapists in collaboration with young people, computer games developers, and is grounded in e-learning theories. It has been designed to appeal to young people internationally. An evaluation of SPARX (187 participants) has shown that young people found it effective, engaging and helpful.

COLLAPSUS, Netherlands, Submarine
URL: www.collapsus.com
Description: Collapsus looks into the near future and shows you how the imminent energy transition affects a group of ten young people, who appear to be caught up in an energy conspiracy. What will their world look like after the turbulent transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources? Following the adventures of Vera, Jack, Tony and Amir, you are lead into a world of conspiracy, treason and, most alarmingly, failing energy supplies. In this story, set in the near future, the international powers try to cope with a transition from fossil to alternative fuels, while dealing with political dissension, uprisings and a population terrified by increasingly frequent black-outs. As a player, you are required to make decisions that leave their mark on a national and a global scale, in your quest to find solutions to the energy crisis.

EPI Life, Singapore, EPHONE INTERNATIONAL (S) PTE LTD
URL: www.epi.com.sg
Description: EPI Life is the World's First mobile phone with integrated ECG
(Electrocardiogram) and health monitoring functions. It allows the user to record their ECG anytime, anywhere, simply by touching the sides of the phone with their fingers, eliminating the need for complicated electrodes or messy gels. Other than ECG, it also allows the user to input key health parameters such as Blood Glucose, Blood Pressure and Cholesterol and transmit these data to their online Personal Health Folder via the EPI Life, which can be accessed by the user via the internet. ECGs are sent to EPI’s 24-hour Health Concierge from the device via GPRS, where qualified doctors and cardiac technicians compare the ECG against the user’s baseline ECG, and respond via SMS based on the results of the comparison. EPI Life, coupled with the 24-hour Health Concierge and online Personal Health Folder, offers an end-to-end solution for remote health monitoring, allowing the end-user to have timely feedback (on-demand) on their heart condition anytime, anywhere.

Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine Digital Museum, China, Beijing Traditional Chinese Medicine International Exchange and Cooperating Center (BTCMIECC)
URL: www.tcm-china.info
Description: Beijing Digital Museum of Traditional Chinese  Medicine is a top science museum and a website to spread and propagate culture of traditional Chinese medicine and scientific knowledge to the world. Beijing Digital Museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine has two versions: English and Chinese. There are many columns, such as medical care, Chinese material medicine, acupuncture, health and life, Qigong, Tuina, imperial court medicine, culture and history, cosmetic treatment, education, science and technology and international exchange.


Verdeate.com, Colombia, Ideas Online
URL: http://www.verdeate.com/
Description: VERDEate.com enables individuals and organizations to create progressively new environmentally friendly habits in their consumption routines through our "Green challenges". These challenges motivate action in a massive and different way through the current web and social media technologies. Through our green challenges users understand the relation between their habits and Climate Change, gain control over their own CO2 emissions and we are able to address the climatic issue from the root. Here’s an example of a Green Challenge that any user (person or organization) can take: "don’t eat meat in the following 2 weeks". This produces a reduction of 5.95 Kg of CO2. Get all of our challenges here [Spanish] http://www.verdeate.com/verdeate/retos


BPN 1566

Connected by broadband, slow in applications (5)

Health care is an area in the Netherlands which needs some shaking up. The health care sector is dominated by managers and not the ones who know much about ICT; many of the doctors do neither. Besides, the varying generations of computers and versions of operating software between general practitioners and medical consultants are hardly compatible. My last general practitioner still ran a patient administration under MS-DOS; this while Bill Gates has introduced Vista after Windows this week

So what can broadband do for the medical profession? Of course it is easy to think of the distribution of x-ray photographs to all the medical consultants. Broadband networks in the hospitals will speed up the medical processes and analyses. It is a pity that my friend Herman de Vos is not living anymore; he would have loved this time. He was one of the first medics I know which acquired a personal computer, an Apple in fact, and got music out of it and statements.

In The Netherlands one of the prominent issues is the Electronic Patient Dossier. There are two problems with it. The medics are not sure whether they want it; I personally think that they sabotage it (and one of the debaters, a medical consultant, stated that he could not work with such a file). I guess that it is partly a generation problem; on the other hand it is a medical chain problem due to the gaps. The other problem with the Electronic Patient Dossier lies with the patient. There are problems about privacy and about the patient taking care of the dossier. What can a patient remove in the Electronic Patient Dossier or ask to be removed? Some people carry their whole life a file with them, telling other medicine men that they are neurotic; this while they only begged to differ with the diagnosis of the general practitioner as they listened to their body or were just nervous.

I guess that we talk about Electronic Patient Dossiers in The Netherlands for more than 10 years and that nothing substantial came from it. Why should it come about now? Just because we have broadband. The KPN bright young manager Elco Blok was asked about the future. He indicated that the technology was there and that we should use it. However he did not indicate how we could change the culture of the medicine men. I guess that it will take another ten years before we will see the first substantial experiments with Electronic Patient Dossiers with patients carrying the dossier on a USB stick or an iPOD to the hospital, the general practitioner and the pharmacist.

During the debate Mr de Bruïne, the European Commission official addressing Societal Challenges, indicated that he was not impressed with the progress in The Netherlands in the medical field. He told about a medical case in Belgium, where patients are very efficiently ‘processed’ and get their treatment without long delays thanks to an efficient administration system.

Blog Posting Number: 655

Tags: e-health, broadband, electronic patient dossier e-health, broadband, electronic patient dossier

Connected by broadband, slow in applications (1)

The Netherlands is in the top league of broadband connections and is always competing with Danmark, Sweden or Iceland in Europe. Yet the broadband connections are great, but in applications the Dutch lag behind. In order to amend this caveat, there is an association, called Netherland Broadbandland (NBL). This association is a public-private partnership (PPP), which wants to stimulate broadband applications in business and industry as well as government. Citizens get what they want, but shops and companies still lag behind, while the connections are there.

In order to stimulate broadband in business and industry as well as in government, NBLC sets up projects in various sectors and organises meetings. On Wednesday there was such a meeting, The Meeting of Minds. With lectures, demonstrations and debates people from the various sectors started to show lead projects to each other and debate the lack of progress.

The formal part of Meeting of Minds was opened by Mr Willem Vermeend, a former assistant secretary of state for finance and a fervent game player, while the keynote address was given by Mr Mark Frequin, a secretary general at the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Mr Vermeend started with a teasing blow, informing Mr Frequin, that Sweden had just opened an embassy in Second Life; the first country to start a virtual embassy, while The Netherlands could only whistle for it. Mr Frequin told the audience that The Netherlands was working on.

The remark gave him the opportunity to make clear to the audience that the Dutch have indeed fine broadband connections; this has been possible thanks to SURFnet, the academic network, which also influences the private sector. But in applying the business opportunities the Dutch have been lacklustre; this while ICT has been the most important growth factor for the country. But in many business and industrial sectors broadband does not come about because the sectors are fragmented, especially in the sectors of retail, health care and government. So what is needed is an upscaling of the broadband applications in the sectors.

This where NBL comes in and starts to form coalitions between government, institutes, sector associations and companies. Since 2005 NBL has started activities in retail in automotive and the leisure industry, in education and in health care. NBL has also undertaken a project in mobility.

In the next days I will pay attention to mobility, leisure industry, education, health care and government.

Blog Posting Number: 651

Tags: broadband, e-health, e-learning, e-government, e-leisure