Artificial Intelligence in Patient Health Monitoring System

 Artificial Intelligence is the study and implementation of actions on computational devices which require human intervention. AI captures the intelligence and uses it in computation technology. Robert Plant stated “if Socrates is a man and all men are mortal, then it can be inferred that Socrates is mortal”. Similarly, AI works on the principle of transitive dependency. Human activities are recorded as the acceptable standard of decision making. Machine intelligence is built over those records and decisions are made by the intelligent machine which work very similar to humans.

Basic Benefits to Healthcare workers and patients

Software applications on Health care system are advantageous to the healthcare facilities, healthcare workers and patients. Some of the benefits of AI in health domain are

  • The information can be quickly accessed with reduced errors.
  • Healthcare workers can coordinate better among themselves reduced need of visiting healthcare facility
  • AI offers better education and training mechanisms to healthcare providers and patients
  • The applications assist in consultation, support self-care and avoid the need of hospitalization thus improving the quality of life for patients. This is evident from different health monitoring systems. These systems can be managed remotely through password protection to keep the sensitive data safe. The systems can analyze data and personalize it to specific application domain.

Healthcare providers can access patient data, prepare reports and adjust sensors according to analysis. For example, a wireless medical telemetry system comprises of patient monitor which collects patient data related to vital signs and transceiver that establishes connection between the monitor and the central station which receives the data from the patient monitor. The patient monitor is capable of transmitting the data to the central station which is further capable of receiving the data as well as ending the communication with the monitor.

Patient Health Monitoring System

Health monitoring is performed by first, establishing connection between the monitor and the central station, collecting the sensitive data from patient, transmitting it to the central station through transceiver, sending signal from monitor to end the transmission and termination of communication between the two locations by the central station.

Benefits of PHMS

Mohammadzadeh and Safdar state that there are diverse opportunities in application of patient health monitoring system (PHMS). Apart from monitoring patient vital signs, allowing healthcare provider to view and prepare reports, manage sensor threshold levels and offering password protection to patients and healthcare providers, these systems further assist patients with self-treatment. They share the information between the healthcare institution and the patients to establish transparency and prepare the stakeholders for in-person diagnosis. PHMS are capable of intelligent information management, generating reports and offering education remotely. The systems maintain seamless communication between the back end and the patient. The applications are capable of offering function specific system depending on the requirement of healthcare provider and its patient. Sensitive data is protected by incorporating access control mechanisms.

Challenges of PHMS

Considering the benefits of PHMS, the challenges that entail the application include security risks and privacy threats, implementation of the application, its integration within the legacy system, high investment, seamless interoperability of the system with health records, accuracy of critical signals and reluctance of users in accepting the technology and educating themselves into using it. Therefore, it is important to consider human and social aspects like budget, feedback and patient and healthcare institution’s support towards using the technology.

Conclusion

The potential of application of PHMS is not fully explored yet. It has substantial advantages as compared to disadvantages in the field of healthcare. However, the rapid increase in the use of these systems in medical field is enhancing the quality of life of patients. The infrastructure required for the system to work as desired like bandwidth, uninterrupted network and software, application tools with sufficient battery, etc. shall facilitate flexibility, mobility and adaptability of the system among the users and shall support world-wide use of the application successfully.

References

Kenneth G. WestNhedti L. ColquittHerbert S. WeinerEric G. PetersenWilliam H. Howell, (2005), “Patient monitoring system”. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6544173B2/en

Mohammadzadeh N, Safdari R., “Patient monitoring in mobile health: opportunities and challenges”. Med Arch. 2014;68(1):57-60. doi: 10.5455/medarh.2014.68.57-60. PMID: 24783916; PMCID: PMC4272470.

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