Usability key to future of e-health

One of the fastest developing areas in medical technology is e-health. This field of innovative medical informatics concerns delivery of health services and information using the internet and related technologies and has already transformed the way a health authority works. Here we look at some of the challenges and opportunities MedTech innovators have in this rich field

In the past few years, online and mobile medical devices have opened up the possibility of remote diagnosis, which would save both time and money for patients and healthcare providers alike. “Being able to monitor remotely can be a huge saver in cost when patients would otherwise be at the surgery instead of work. For those with chronic conditions who can be monitored regularly at home, it releases hospitals of the burden of managing huge numbers of patients,” says Medical Affairs Director at Medtronic’s Diabetes Business Unit, Simon Schwaighofer.

Schwaighofer has been combining technology with medicine since his student days when he’d transmit planning and live surgical data to specialists around the world for a second opinion. “We wanted to get the best minds working on our case, the ones we wouldn’t have been able to expose our findings to otherwise,” he recalls.

“Even then, working on medical research and development within a start-up company, there were cost issues associated with people travelling to follow-ups. Because we wanted to be as cost-efficient as possible we ran our clinical trials over the internet to cover different populations.”

According to Schwaighofer, innovators now face a number of social and technical issues in their quest to develop breakthrough medical devices, which can help us in the treatment of chronic conditions.

“The regulatory process can stifle innovation, increase costs and slow down the process of bringing new and valuable devices to the market,” he says. “We have to sustain trust in the latest technologies that are now being used and will become the standard way of treatment.”

Medical devices need to be easily integrated into a hospital’s existing technologies. “This not only applies to remote e-health, but also to
e-health in near or closer environments,” he says. So, for example, when a patient enters the hospital wearing a pacemaker, the local wireless network recognises the medical device and knows that it requires servicing and can accommodate the device easily over the internet.

More emphasis must also be placed on device ease-of-use. “We have to master the human factors in engineering. Innovation has to make the technology so simple that it is absolutely intuitive to use. It also has to make everyone’s life easier. This includes the patients and healthcare professionals,” says Schwaighofer. “Usability is key for the future. People are fed up with system complexity.”

However, Schwaighofer readily admits this will be a huge challenge in itself. “We can learn from other industries, such as aeronautics, where cockpit technology has to manage huge amounts of complex data, and the chemical industry where a plant control room must provide an easy overview of complex data almost at the blink of an eye.

“Currently we’re supplied with health data which we don’t need for the treatment. It gets in the way of the more relevant information which is buried in a huge amount of data.”

Here again, usability and data representation becomes key. Schwaighofer believes we should be more open to alternative ways of communication, and not just simplifying screen information or providing alerts and updates via computer. 

“We need a better understanding of the huge amount of data that is presented to healthcare professionals. But everyone is so focused on innovation via computer screen, you still have to fight against competing data.

“We’re really waiting for actual devices that, say, change shape or size, so that when you enter a room they immediately catch your eye. Or perhaps change colour so you know they need your immediate attention,” he says.

“Simple measures give you immediate cues about the state of things.

We have a surfeit of data. There’s no problem transferring it from A to B. The problems always come with interpretation of that data and ease of use,” he concludes.

01/12/2011 | Posted by Medtronic
Tags: remote diagnosis; e-health; medical device innovation; breakthrough devices; health data management; mobile devices; Simon Schwaighofer; information communication technology; ICT; medical informatics; medical technology