Technological innovation makes diagnosis and treatment outside the hospital a reality

Doctors are treating patients in remote villages

During a recent trip to China, Yiannis got a glimpse into the future of medicine through a portable medical kit.

The portable medical kit contains an array of gadgets: an electrocardiogram (ECG) monitor that detects abnormalities in the heart's electrical signals, a pulse oximeter to detect low blood oxygen levels associated with cardiopulmonary disease, a blood glucose monitor to detect blood sugar abnormalities, an automatic blood pressure monitor and a digital thermometer.

With this portable medical kit, doctors can easily hold an electronic diagnostic device with the same clinical quality level in one hand. This device is small and battery-powered, so doctors can carry it with them to rural areas far away from hospitals.

“Clinicians can run a battery of tests outside of the hospital and diagnose and treat the results, so they can immediately prescribe a treatment plan for any patient who needs it,” said Yiannis, a manager specializing in medical device engineering at Texas Instruments. “This would have been impossible a few years ago.”

Medicine is undergoing a major transformation around the world. Much of this change is based on the growth of wireless technology and the growing demand for smaller devices that can monitor, image, and diagnose patients anywhere. Healthcare will expand beyond the doctor’s office and hospital, improving the patient experience while reducing costs. 

“Checkups in clinical settings are still critical,” Yiannis said, “but now we’re seeing that healthcare professionals can continuously monitor their patients and extract useful information from them remotely.”

Treatment at the patient’s home

If medical staff limit themselves to medical examinations of patients only in the consulting room or hospital ward, it means that they cannot obtain comprehensive information about the patients' daily life.

The proliferation of a range of highly portable health monitors that can be used for remote tracking in a variety of modes, such as small ECG monitors or pulse oximeters, similar to what we see in clinics, is playing a big role.

“Collecting patient information through remote monitoring is revolutionizing medicine,” said Christopher P. Koch, a physician and research scientist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, who directs the hospital’s digital health efforts.

Doctors have begun using these wearables and other wireless devices to capture vital signs at home. Patients wear wrist devices that are the size of a watch and can be used as heart rate monitors, automatic blood pressure monitors, or pulse oximeters. With this device, patients do not have to be treated in the hospital and can stay in their homes where they feel comfortable and familiar. At the same time, this data is also transmitted regularly to doctors and service providers, who can nip potential health crises in the bud.

“Being able to track patients’ high blood pressure, blood sugar levels and other data is already having a major impact on how we manage chronic conditions,” said Dr. Almario. “We are using remote monitoring technology to reduce the risk of sudden heart attacks and other acute conditions.”

Portable device, big impact

This is not just about routine health data monitoring, but extends beyond hospitals and doctors' offices, where even some of the most sophisticated imaging and diagnostic tools are now available in portable form factors. For example, ultrasound scanners, as Yiannis mentioned, have traditionally been cart-mounted devices in clinics. Now, thanks to advances in components, while maintaining signal quality, lowering power and shrinking size, ultrasound devices have shrunk to the size of handheld devices that can be powered by batteries.

Carried by first responders or mounted in ambulances, smart probes produce clear images of internal organs in real time, often revealing details that are critical for immediate treatment. For patients in remote areas of less developed countries, where well-equipped clinics may be few and far between, smart probes in the hands of medical personnel can detect the difference between a healthy and unhealthy newborn, or predict a crisis before a heart attack.

“The lack of accurate and affordable diagnostic tools is a huge barrier to good health care, but new technologies are helping portable devices to be used in all areas,” Yiannis said.

Yiannis focuses on medical equipment engineering construction

High-quality medical data will promote health development

As healthcare continues to evolve beyond the hospital setting, medicine will rely on increasingly powerful portable health devices, raising the bar for the semiconductor technology behind them.

“These devices need to monitor subtle signals within the complex environment of the human body, so the accuracy and resolution of the data are critical,” Yiannis said.

At the same time, the size of these devices needs to continue to shrink along with power consumption, as these tools usually rely on battery power to operate, which places high demands on component performance.

At the same time, the healthcare system has some of the most stringent data security standards, and wireless devices face severe challenges when faced with large amounts of patient data in addition to clinical data, which requires that data must be protected at the highest level.

Yiannis also firmly believes that although it is difficult, engineers can meet the challenge. Yiannis said: "This is a technological advancement that touches the lives of all human beings. The goal of common health is worth uniting everyone."