teleDoc Smart Associate

Inspiration

The modern world has, for the first time in decades, experienced the havoc caused by novel Coronavirus COVID-19 for the past six months and counting. The world's big pharma, governments, and scientists are working incessantly to create vaccines and medication to the market to tackle the pandemic. The scientific community recommended the lockdown and social distancing.

This pandemic forced most of us to go virtual because of the lockdown and social distancing. This include most of the patients opted or even forced to access medical consultation through a video call. Video calls do not provide physiological metrics such as vital signs that include oxygen saturation and temperature. Because of the lack of these physiological wellbeing metrics, the patients may have received a suboptimal clinical diagnosis and may even misdiagnosis. There are many devices in the market for assessing vital signs for decades. However, the use of these devices is not adopted by a large population due to technological barriers. Here, we have tested the feasibility of an IoT device to functions as a smart associate to the telehealth doctor providing real-time vital signs recording

What it does

TeleDoc Smart Associate not only provides real-time vital signs but also capable of integrating sophisticated sensors such as force data, EKG, EMG, and others. In addition, the device also capable of processing machine vision and artificial intelligence algorithms. These advanced capabilities provide an unparalleled advantage in performing advanced data analytics such as saccades, movement recognitions, and speech analysis. This device is also capable of providing thermal imagery for identifying wound healing. We could implement gamification to collect the data for improved patient adherence to medications and rehabilitation.

How I built it

With a python powered machine vision camera consists of multiple I/O channels along with CAN, SPI, and I2C communication buses. These communication buses can be used to control many devices at once. This device will be standalone and all the data will reside on the unit. The patient can voluntarily choose to share the report generated using HL-7 standards to easily integrate with electronic health records.

Challenges I ran into

Short time and unavailability of resources due to lockdown. These include sensors and electronic equipment.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Successfully showed the feasibility of teleDOC Smart Associate. Identified novel ways to find the solution of clinical importance.

What I learned

I learned that it is not easy to gain accurate vital information from a patient virtually.

What's next for teleDoc Smart Associate

Add advanced data analytics features along with the medication adherence protocols. Because of the small form factor, we can turn this device into a social distancing enforcing wearable.

Built With

• iot
• micropython
• openmv
• rtsp