Advances in health-care technology in spotlight

Summit discusses wearable detection devices and drones being either used or developed

DRONES that deliver blood, or portable devices that detect seizures or carry reminders to take medicine, are among the technologies being used or developed in the global healthcare industry that were discussed at a summit in Sandton.

Danie Pauw, the managing director at Health24, pointed out that wearable devices such as FitBits were being used by 21 percent of people in the US and that this statistic was reflected in a study last year on 10 000 people in South Africa.

Fatima Badat, the senior manager in health care at Ernst & Young, gave the example of how wearable devices were used to monitor the length of tremors experienced by patients with Parkinson’s disease.

“To the patients, it feels like six to seven minutes. The device can say what the length or frequency of it was and they’re finding that the six to seven minutes is actually only six to seven seconds, which is (important) information that can be used,” she said.

Another delegate at the Healthcare Innovation Summit said devices were being developed which could detect whether an epileptic patient was about to have a seizure.

Peter Mills, the head of systems integration sales at T-Systems and who has diabetes, said he was looking forward to the introduction of wearable devices that measured blood sugar through skin moisture.

But Dr Robert Selepe, the executive clinical transformation officer at Telimpilo Healthcare Group, said wearables were mostly being worn by individuals because they were fashionable. “Let’s not look at wearables just as a fashion, but as a tool through which we can connect to those we are serving,” he said.

Selepe said it would be ideal if patient behaviour could be monitored through wearables.

“One area which (can be useful) with wearables is if you prescribe behaviour modification. If you tell an overweight person to exercise, I’d be able to see if they’re walking about.”

Meanwhile, robots and bio- metrics were also set to play an important role in health care.

In the US, self-navigating robots with stethoscopes – known as physicians on wheels – drove through hospitals to check on patients, said Elliot Sack, eHealth Group director.

A push-cart workstation robot was used as a surgical training tool: it had an extendable arm with cameras, which allowed for multiple views of a surgery.

Biometrics, normally in the form of fingerprints or facial and voice recognition which were traditionally used for access control, could soon become instrumental in identifying patients correctly.

Nicolas Garcia, a senior manager at Safran, explained how people’s personal and medical information could be stored in the cloud and linked to their fingerprints. This could be used, for example, if a person was in an accident or other emergency and not in a position to give emergency services their particulars. Their finger could be placed on a biometric scanner which would pull up all their details.

Meanwhile, Edmund Katiti, the head of the Nepad e-Africa programme at the Nepad agency, said he had heard how drones were used to deliver blood in Rwanda.

A US drone company in collaboration with the Rwandan government had started using the devices last month to deliver blood and medicine to previously inaccessible areas, according to media reports.

Other technology being worked on included temperature sensors for medication.

Janie Basson, the business development executive at Resolve Solution Partners, said her company was looking into developing these sensors to use on medicines donated through US aid programmes to African countries. “They want to know that the medication they donate reaches the right people on the ground and at the right quality levels,” she said.

“We’re looking at implementing sensors that track temperature control on medicines, that arrive in donor acceptance countries via ship and air – and send alerts when medicines have gone outside a safe temperature level.”

This would ensure that medicines damaged by heat as well as grey and stolen medication would not be used.

Despite these advances in medical technology, Basson said that as cellphones were becoming more accessible to the masses, they would probably become the first major device to be used to the benefit of individuals at the lower end of the market, rather than wearables and other expensive devices.

Location settings on phones could be used to direct nurses and caregivers to patients in rural areas in an effective way. Before, landmarks were mostly used to help with directions.

Let’s not look at wearables just as fashion