FIVE INNOVATIONS FROM OTTAWA’S CLEARWATER CLINICAL
SHOEBOX
The first U.S. Food and Drug Administration-listed iPad Audiometer, which costs about $2,500, it allows healthcare workers in the field to conduct hearing tests or have patients do their own. It’s being used in clinics, schools and on work sites in more than 30 countries from Mexico to Myanmar. Studies by CHEO in Iqaluit and at the renowned Mayo Clinic show it works — without the need for $35,000 in equipment and a sound booth.
CLEARSCOPE
An adapter that connects an endoscope — just a flexible tube with a light on it — to any smart phone so procedures can be recorded and the videos reviewed or shared instantly. So far, more than 4,000 of them have been sold in 20 countries for about $500 — largely replacing cumbersome video towers that can cost as much as $100,000.
MODICA
Launched last September, the free iOS app allows doctors and other health-care workers to record, add notes, file and share mobile medical images and video. The first so-called mHealth app to comply with U.S. health-care privacy laws, it features an in-app patient consent form and locks down images in an encrypted, password protected camera roll before storing them in a cloud service.
DIZZYFIX
Four in 10 of us will have dizziness during our lifetimes with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo the most common cause. It can be treated by what’s known as the Epley manoeuvre, where the patient’s head is manipulated to move crystals in the inner ear that have shifted. But if family doctors can’t do it, patients faced long waits to see specialist. The $15 smartphone based app shows the doctor onscreen how to tilt the head as the patient holds the phone to the forehead. After a single DizzyFix treatment, nearly nine in 10 patients recovered.
STILL TO COME: V-STROBE
It’s the working title for a justpatented method to bring laryngeal stroboscopy — what Bromwich calls making the invisible visible — to a smartphone, replacing a $25,000 piece of equipment used to examine a patient’s voice box, which moves too quickly for a physician to see. Instead of using slow-motion, software syncs the camera to the frequency of the patient’s voice, creating what’s called the wagon wheel effect, like when a car’s wheels appear to move slowly backwards on camera.