Your Sk.ru correspondent jumped at the unique opportunity offered by the Skolkovo pavilion at the Open Innovations forum and has gone through his first mobile medical examination. After measuring his blood pressure and performing an ECG, receiving a remote consultation from a cardiologist and having passed genetic analysis, he eventually got a full electronic medical record with remote access possibility.
At the Skolkovo pavilion the foundation residents presenting their mobile diagnostic devices were all dressed in white coats with the inscription “Digital Medicine” on their backs, and their devices were used in the exhibition’s mobile diagnostics process. Health screenings for guests of the show were, of course, first of all, a demonstration of the devices to the participants. Thus one can begin a "mobile medical check-up" by creating an entry in the “Med@rkhiv” system and receiving a plastic card with an individual patient number. All that is required is to report one’s name, date of birth and email address. And that record is ready, a plastic card is issued, and then the card serves as proof of registration in the electronic health records system, “Med@rkhiv”. This means, among other things, that now I can remotely view and show the physician, wherever I may find a specialist, any data obtained from earlier analyses, tests, cardiograms and everything else that doctors usually register in the medical records. I personally find the following very convenient: I have, for example, lost my card once in the district community hospital; well, it is always a troublesome thing to restore lost paper medical records, I can vouch for that. Now all I need in order to see your card is access to the Internet. And this, of course, is good news. So, the card is ready, the account is created on the server, and I'm armed with a plastic card with access codes to mobile devices. Moreover, in my mailbox, I already have "pending" notices with a password and login for remote access over the network.
They work in the same general vein as FRUKT-MD. But this company’s main highlight is that they have managed to create multi-platform software. That is to say, users can receive and transmit medical data to a cloud server with different platforms established by global manufacturers of mobile devices. "Specifically for this exhibition we have created an application, an Sk-Kiosk”, -MedM head Denis Hitrov told us, "we use it to identify you as a patient and send data to the already existing electronic map. The MedM forum demonstrated how this technology works, while it considered all potential newcomers. The Bluetooth scale transferred the data to smartphones of various brands that were on display at the booth. And MedM showed how, regardless of the brand of smartphone used, patient information was transferred to the patient’s card.
While your correspondent was passing medical examination at the Skolkovo pavilion resident booths, quite a few of those wishing to undergo free mobile diagnostics had gathered inside Skolkovo pavilion, and among them there w clearly many foreigners. And yet, I had another opportunity to use the Maxet Line booth, where I met the resident company’s CEO Sergei Sevostianov and his colleague Sergei Katrych. Here I did an ECG using a portable cardiograph and communicated online in the "Teledoktor" system with Vladimir Gabrinym, a cardiologist from the "CDC functional diagnostics" Regional Clinical Hospital of the Chelyabinsk Region.
As it stands now, all the tests for diagnoses and clinical histories will be compiled on the server “Med@rkhiv” in the patient's account. So, I take the first test. It started with the “FRUKT MD” booth, where patients were greeted by CTO Maxim Yatskovskiy, who had his home health diagnostic instruments on hand. While at this booth, my card was scanned immediately for access to the archive. Maxim explains that if I had home diagnostic instruments, they would be entered into the system immediately and they would be available on my card, even without further verification.
Maxim Yatskovsky suggests measuring blood pressure and records the so-called single-channel diagram (a little later I will present another resident’s ECG in more detail). But the highlight of the FRUKT equipment is not just the fact that it is able to collect data,” said Maxim , “but rather that it is a platform that is able to collect data, process it and issue a pre-med assessment.” Outwardly the tonometer looks just like any that can be bought in a local pharmacy. But it is different in that it is remotely connected to smartphones for the recovery and transfer of data. So the blood pressure is measured. Maxim suggests wearing bracelet electrodes for an ECG to be takenl: and thirty seconds after the single-channel cardiogram has been removed, the first two records for blood pressure and the ECG are recorded on my e-card on the Med@rkhiv server.
Furthermore, my journey led me to the Sequoia Genetics stand. At this booth you could take a test in the form of direct DNA sequence analysis of three hereditary diseases associated with your metabolism. These diseases are included in the Ministry of Health list of priorities, and their diagnosis is particularly important for young families who are planning to have a child. Within the scope of these three diseases with the hard-to-pronounce names of fenilketunoria, galactosemia and cystic fibrosis, the system has been fully verified and validated and can already be used in medical diagnostics practice, as the company representative, Maria Borisho, explained to me. The procedure was simple: a saliva sample was taken from the space between the cheek and the gums, using a wooden stick with a cotton swab. The results of the genetic study were to become available to me in a few days, while in the meantime I was waiting for the winner of the booth for the recent MedM “Skolkovo Innovation Award” contest supported by Cisco I-PRIZE.
The portable electrocardiograph is part of the TELEDOCTOR.PRO telemedicine system. It is interesting that, among other things, it is a personal diagnostic device that gives voice commands to the patient and explains step by step how and what to do to perform an ECG, informing whether or not information was successfully recorded or not. The cardiogram is then fed to a wireless interface on a smartphone (in this case, we had availed of wi-fi) and is sent in the form of multimedia messages in the cloud space where the primary processing and data buffering occurs. Then they are sent to the medical center, which in this case was in the Chelyabinsk region. A doctor evaluates the cardiogram and then sends the results to “Med@rkhiv”, where the patient is identified. We also checked how the online consultation using the TELEDOCTOR.PRO system works. Doctors receive the ECG iresults almost immediately after it is performed and, if necessary, communication can occur both online and simply by phone.
Despite this, as a reminder, there were difficulties that arose at district health centers in a vicious cycle, which included: waiting in line for a therapist; waiting in line for initial consultation with a cardiologist; receiving your referral to a specialized Cardiology center; traffic jams on that lengthy journey, and then waiting in more lines. "But with such devices available at home,” as we continued the conversation with Sergey Katrych, “there can be at times an increase in the hospital bed turnover: the patients who undergo a coronagraphy (which involves the dilation of coronary artery vessels using stents and other technology) lie in hospital beds for two weeks because they need to have an ECG performed. And they could have it done at home, leaving hospital as soon as their stent takes hold". It's hard to disagree. Anyone who has ever seen, for example, how older people pass through various ordeals before they even get examined by a qualified medical professional really brings to the forefront the idea that mobile medicine should undoubtedly continue to develop.