Arto Holopainen's Forum Nokia Blog

Arto Holopainen's Forum Nokia Blog http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog Specialist with healthcare and mobile workforce (enterprise) related mobile solutions. ahoccc 2009-11-23T17:53:18Z Using Symbian devices for telemedicine and eHealth http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/06/09/using-symbian-devices-for-telemedicine-and-ehealth I take this opportunity with Forum Nokia blog and discuss about harnessing Symbian devices for telemedicine and eHealth purposes.  For those whom telemedicine and eHealth are strange words:  Telemedicine (defined by <a href="http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=33620">medterms.com</a>): The use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications for the health and education of the patient or healthcare provider and for the purpose of improving patient care. Telemedicine includes consultative, diagnostic, and treatment services.   eHealth (defined by <a href="http://www.himss.org/content/files/ehealth_whitepaper.pdf">HIMSS’ eHealth SIG</a>): eHealth (or E-health) is defined as the application of Internet and other related technologies in the healthcare industry to improve the access, efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of clinical and business processes utilized by healthcare organizations, practitioners, patients, and consumers in an effort to improve the health status of patients.  There are lot of solutions for personal use and amusement as well as for enterprise but as always special sectors like healthcare are not first-in-line when thinking about Symbian applications. It’s quite interesting since there are lot of healthcare (or medical) applications for PDA devices like Windows Mobile and Palm. Why Symbian is avoided in this context?   Surely there are some applications for Symbian like medical dictionaries, personal diet calculators and fitness planners available for Symbian but not so many when talking about using the device in serious way e.g. to monitor your vital signs and to transfer them to the healthcare staff when needed or for the professional use.  Just think of one of the most common scenarios: you have some problems with your blood pressure and you are given orders to take blood pressure measurements at home for certain follow-up period. You take the measurements, write them down to your paper diary and take them to your doctor for feedback on the results. Are you starting to get the picture? Why not use your phone for storing the information? Of course, it is no problem to implement suitable application to store and display the information. But when adding the direct connection to blood pressure meter to collect results automatically and the information transfer directly to the doctor and even to use phone to receive feedback from the doctor, we are starting to talk eHealth and telemedicine (or should I say tele-HomeCare).   Thinking this way, there are vast amount of possible uses for this kind of solutions that can collect, store and transfer vital signs. I have been working with this kind of solutions for some time and as a developer there are some intriguing issues to think of. But I’ll get back to these later...    Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Enterprise Symbian C++ Healthcare 2006-06-09T01:32:49Z ahoccc Connectivity with medical POC devices, background http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/06/13/connectivity-with-medical-poc-devices-background Bluetooth has finally found its way to medical devices as well (especially POC, Point-Of-Care). There are still lot of measurement devices out that just gives the measurement result to the device screen, no connections to outside world whatsoever. Then majority of devices that has output connections uses serial communication, either using RS-232 or serial-to-USB conversion. Minority of connectable devices uses Bluetooth, infrared or other wireless communication channel. However it seems that Bluetooth has got manufacturers’ interest since new medical measurement devices with Bluetooth are coming. Even Bluetooth SIG has special <a href="http://www.bluetooth.com/Bluetooth/Press/SIG/BLUETOOTH_SIG_AIMS_TO_IMPROVE_HEALTHCARE_EXPERIENCE_THROUGH_INTEROPERABILITY.htm">medical devices working group</a>.   Even though medical devices are bound by very strict regulations it is quite surprising to notice the variations between Bluetooth implementations between devices. First of all what comes to my mind when talking about medical device and Bluetooth is security. Health care sector and medical industry have always been very straightforward with the security issues when it comes to dealing electronic patient records. So, personally I would take granted that medical devices uses the highest Bluetooth security level (level 3), but that’s not the real world case. For example, there are devices as follows:   <ul style="margin-top: 0cm" type="disc"> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">devices without any kind of security </li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">devices with fixed PINs like 0000 and 1234 </li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">devices that has PIN code hard coded to its friendly name like MEAS_DEVICE_123456 </li> <li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">devices that blindly tries to find first available Bluetooth SPP service around and then tries to send information to that service </li> </ul> The common thing for all the above cases in my opinion is the attempt to ease the device users work e.g. by bypassing Bluetooth paring process so that the user does not have to input the actual PIN code.  This is very awkward when comparing to other health care security regulations regarding electronic patient data. For some cases this kind of solutions might be suitable, e.g. for cases where there is some kind of dedicated “black box” whose only job is to listen and collect data from specific devices. But when these measurement devices are used with Symbian, developers have to think twice before implementing working connectors.   Stay tuned for more…   Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Connectivity Enterprise Symbian C++ Healthcare 2006-06-13T08:23:23Z ahoccc Connectivity with medical POC devices, bluejacking? http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/06/16/connectivity-with-medical-poc-devices-bluejacking What does bluejacking to do with medical measurement devices?   Let’s take closer look for the case where measurement device is active in creating connection to other device to deliver measurement results. In this case device functioning is as follows:<ul style="margin-top: 0cm" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">After person has taken measurement device activates Bluetooth communication automatically (person can not affect to this) </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">If there is no previously paired target in the memory, device starts to look Bluetooth targets that provide SPP service. <ul style="margin-top: 0cm" type="circle"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Device tries to create connection one after one to found Bluetooth targets with SPP service </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">When some Bluetooth target responds with correct PIN, device sends measurement results. </li></ul></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">If there is previously paired target in device memory, it tries to connect and send measurements automatically. <ul style="margin-top: 0cm" type="circle"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">If for some reason target is not available, or transmission fails. Device begins again Bluetooth inquiry for new possible target. </li></ul></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">And all this happens “under the hood” without any indication to the measurement device user. </li></ul>  Here is one case that might happen when person is taking measurements at home and no initial pairing has been done. There isalso one PDA device and one PC with Bluetooth SPP service available in the next door neighbours (isn't wireless fun!). So the initial communication might not go as expected. <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=296&file=pairing.jpg" border="0" alt="Measurement device initiated communication, initial pairing" width="640" height="480" />Not so nice Bluetooth planning from the measurement device manufacturer, eh? Neighbouring devices gets connection attempt notification from some obscurely named measurement device.  This does not end to this with this device. Let’s think about simpler case where there is only measurement device and correct target device in the range. But the target device is advertising two SPP services, both from different applications. Only one application is waiting for measurement results, other application is for some other purposes. Let’s see what could happen. <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=297&file=two_services.jpg" border="0" alt="Measurement device initiated communication, two SPP service in one target" width="640" height="480" />This case is hard reality with older Series 60 models (e.g. Nokia 6600). There is one Bluetooth SPP service advertised by system (for unknown reason). So it is impossible to get these Series 60 models to communicate with this measurement device, since the connection is always tried with system SPP service.   How could this multiple service problem be handled? <ul style="margin-top: 0cm" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Measurement device should look for devices with SPP service and with specific service name -> service name separates multiple SPP services from each other. Of course this would need modifications to device itself… </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">One not so elegant solution could be that listening application could try to be the first application to register to SDP database with SPP service. This way it would be most likely the first service reported in SDP inquiry. </li></ul>  Let’s look how this “named service” principle works for these two presented problem cases.<img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=298&file=pairing_named.jpg" border="0" alt="Measurement device initiated communication, initial pairing with named service" width="640" height="480" /> <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=299&file=two_services_named.jpg" border="0" alt="Measurement device initiated communication, two SPP service in one target with named service" width="640" height="480" /> Now everything seems to work better… And if you are wondering if this kind of measurement device could even exist, yes it does and the device is also quite a lot used with different kind of target devices.  Stay tuned for more…Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Connectivity Enterprise Symbian C++ Healthcare 2006-06-16T00:52:44Z ahoccc Symbian and smart monitoring of human motion http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/08/18/symbian-and-smart-monitoring-of-human-motion With the release of Nokia 5500, there has been lot of discussion how to utilize the integrated motion sensor. This integrated sensor is excellent for certain type of applications but would it be better not just to monitor phone motion but the actual person muscle activity and other bio-signals?   You could have integrated sensors built in to your clothes (e.g. sports wear) that does not monitor only motion but also muscle activity and heart rate automatically. Sensor information can be collected directly to your mobile. With this kind of smart monitoring of human motion you can monitor your exercise, daily activities and fitness development very easily and accurately.   So, what do you need for this? <ul><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Mobile device (preferably, Symbian) with Bluetooth</div></li><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Monitoring application</div></li><li><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Clothing that has built in smart monitoring technology (e.g. Smart wear, active clothing)</div></li></ul>Just put on smart wear, clothes similar to normal skin tight sport wear that has “built-in” sensors for muscle activity, motion and heart rate, and start monitoring with your Symbian device.   This would be ideal solution for personal wellbeing as well as for professional athletes to monitor their exercises. Even more, the results could be transferred using 3G network to the personal trainer or coach for further analysis.<img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=300&file=smart_wear.jpg" border="0" alt="Muscle activity monitoring with Symbian device and smart wear" width="640" height="480" />  Ok, do you think this sound like the future? No, these advanced solutions already exist but sadly are not very widely known like other professional healthcare/wellbeing related smart phone solutions. For example, a company called Mega Electronics Ltd (<a href="http://www.megaemg.com">www.megaemg.com</a>) is specialized in bio-signal monitoring devices and technology. Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Connectivity Enterprise Healthcare 2006-08-18T10:52:51Z ahoccc Symbian device control using muscle activity - a case study http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/09/13/symbian-device-control-using-muscle-activity-a-case-study My previous blog “<a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=161">Symbian and smart monitoring of human motion</a>” seemed to inspire a lot of people, so I decided to go deeper into this subject.   In this blog I present a real world working case for controlling your mobile using your muscles.  Case setup:<ul style="margin-top: 0cm" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">Series60/Series80 mobile phone </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">Small battery-operated Bluetooth enabled two-channel EMG monitoring device (MultiTrainer by <a href="http://www.megaemg.com">Mega Electronics Ltd</a>) </li><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; tab-stops: list 36.0pt">MuscleMonitor application. This application was built specifically for this case and it monitors muscle activity (EMG) with two channels, so two different muscles (biceps in this case) can be monitored, one channel for each muscle. </li></ul><img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=301&file=musclecontrol_setup.jpg" border="0" alt="Controlling Symbian device with biceps MuscleControl case setup" width="640" height="480" />The application shows muscle activity as graphical trend and is capable of basic operations such as muscle balance calculations, muscle activity counters and min/max follow-up.   I think this is quite intriguing as it is but then I added possibility to map certain muscle activity level to Symbian commands (key press, key press sequences etc.). So, basically using muscle by contracting and relaxing I can execute certain commands for Symbian device. And these commands are sent to the foreground (active) application. In essence, the application monitors muscle activity in the background and sends commands to the active application based on muscle activity.  As a proof-of-concept, I configured muscle activity command sequence for the Nokia SnakeEx game controls. You know the Snake game, where you control snake in a maze trying to collect food and avoid crashing to the maze borders. Following picture shows the command sequence configured for this case.<img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=302&file=musclecontrol_snakeex_commands.jpg" border="0" alt="MuscleControl SnakeEx commands" width="640" height="480" /> All this means simply that when right bicep is contracted, snake turns clockwise and when left bicep is contracted, snake turns counter-clockwise.   However as you can see from above picture, it is not enough just to execute one command e.g. when turning clockwise but several depending on the current snake direction. Also when contracting both biceps at once, left softkey is executed. This allows you to initiate new game without touching the device.This application actually works as a general muscle-controller for Symbian device. With a few adjustments, application could follow the active foreground application name and based on that change command set on-the-fly. So when you are in messaging application, you could e.g. use muscles to write messages with T9. And when some game is active, command set is related to that game. Also different muscle contract-relax sequences could be mapped to different actions as well as different muscle activity levels. As I see it, possibilities as enormous with this kind of “bio-control”. Even more, in this case only two-channels were utilised, but when adding more channels you could use more muscles and more controls.  I must say that when you have played the game for some time, you feel like you have been doing real workout. [added later] Please review the addition "<a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=224">Symbian device control using muscle activity - a case study part 2</a>" to this case as well. Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Entertainment Games Healthcare 2006-09-13T12:02:59Z ahoccc Using smart phones as medical image viewers for teleradiology and teleneurosurgery http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/09/26/using-smart-phones-as-medical-image-viewers-for-teleradiology-and-teleneurosurgery The idea of using smart phones as tool for teleradiology (and teleneurosurgery) has existed as long there has been smart phones (from the first greyscale-display Nokia Communicators). Of course the device displays, communication and data processing speeds have not been adequate for competing with real workstations and fixed-line communications.  However, the smart phone features like pocket size dimensions, usage regardless of the physical location and the usage for voice calls at the same time as you review the data have been very appealing for teleradiology as a secondary consultation tool.  The first real system that reached production use (as far as I know it) was the <a href="http://www.biomed.ntua.gr/momeda/">MOMEDA</a> project that I have already bypassed in my previous blogs. With the system developed in that project e.g. neurosurgeons in the Oulu University Hospital in Finland have since year 2000 made their decisions based on CT (<a href="http://medicalimaging.org/about/glossary.cfm#C">Computed Tomography</a>) image data even before entering the hospital with a help of smart phone terminals <a href="http://www.tbs.ts.it/europacs2004/papers/77.pdf">[1]</a>. As said the first prototypes were done to Symbian predecessor Psion’s MX5 PDA device (running EPOC ER5). Unfortunately MX5 did not have integrated communication capabilities and therefore the actual device that was used was Nokia Communicator 9110 with GeOS 3.0.   In this blog I like to present few suitability issues of current Symbian devices (Series60 & Series80) as tools for medical image (restricted to CT and MR) viewers.  The first obvious issue is the mobile device screen size and resolution. The CT and MRI (<a href="http://medicalimaging.org/about/glossary.cfm#M">Magnetic Resonance Imaging</a>) images are commonly 512x512 pixels with 12bit greyscale dynamics. So theoretically the images can have 4096 different shades of grey. This brings us to the second obvious issue with medical images.  Since it is essential that the original image can be viewed with the original screen resolution without scaling we need to evaluate device screen resolutions. Following picture presents current Symbian device display resolutions versus CT image resolution. <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=304&file=mobile_radiology_screenresolutions.jpg" border="0" alt="Symbian device screen size vs. CT image size" width="640" height="480" />Clearly Series60 displays with 352x416 and Series80 displays with 640x320 resolutions suits best for the viewing. However, to get quick overview of the image(s) scaled images (e.g. 128x128 thumbnails) can be used and then even Series60 device with 176x208 resolution might manage as well.   The other issue is the device capability of displaying pure shades of grey. Since the images might contain theoretically 4096 different shades of grey it is obvious that smart phone displays can not handle that. But even the human eye cannot accurately distinguish between that amounts of different shades of grey. Therefore to allow the observer to interpret the image, only a limited number of greyscales are displayed at once. Clinically useful grey scale is achieved by viewing suitable range of grey scales depending on the tissue being studied. Following picture presents greyscale dynamics with common smart phone displays as well as two examples about different greyscale ranges for different regions of interest.  <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=303&file=mobile_radiology_greyscales.jpg" border="0" alt="Most common smart phone screen colour depths versus number of pure shades of grey" width="640" height="480" />   You might wonder how you know what is the greyscale are to display e.g. for brain tissue? To put simple, each pixels represents different x-ray attenuation values. This number is compared to the attenuation value of water and displayed on a scale of arbitrary units named Hounsfield units (HU). So with Hounsfield Units you can distinguish different greyscale ranges e.g. for brain tissue. For those who like to understand better there for example nice document called “<a href="http://www.fleshandbones.com/readingroom/pdf/940.pdf">Introduction to CT physics</a>”.  Ok, this was quick overview for the subject and I hope this gave you some ideas that smart phones can be used in very different medical applications.Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Enterprise Healthcare 2006-09-26T10:48:09Z ahoccc Enhancing self-care and personal health monitoring with smart phones http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/09/29/enhancing-self-care-and-personal-health-monitoring-with-smart-phones Imagine the case where your doctor has prescribed you to take e.g. blood pressure measurements at home regularly for some time period. You should write down all the measurement results and bring the result log to the doctor after monitoring period.  Ok, you take the measurements and write them down. Few times you perhaps forgot to write measurement down and you write it down later trying to remember what the measurement result was. Then you take them to your doctor. Doctor looks results and perhaps types them into clinic information system and then gives you a feedback.   So, what’s the point here? This is just normal routine to do. I would like to introduce alternative way to do this using today’s smart phones.   In my opinion, the combination of self-monitoring devices with mobile technology offers several advantages in comparison with traditional monitoring methods. In personal health monitoring with smart phones accurate measurement results are available to health care professionals in almost real time regardless of your location. Your personal treatment can be monitored and quickly adapted to a change in health status. Furthermore, by being able to follow the progress of your own treatment, you are more motivated to follow the prescribed therapy.  Smart phones can offer mobile solutions to collect measurements results automatically and wirelessly from the measuring devices and seamlessly transfer the collected data to the healthcare personnel for further analysis. Since smart phones today have well enough storage and processing capabilities they can be used to collect, store and transfer information from different measuring devices at a same time. For example, a blood pressure monitor, a weighing scale and a glucometer can be used to collect and register key information in diabetes care.<img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=305&file=smartphone_diabetes.jpg" border="0" alt="Using smart phone to register key information in diabetes care" width="640" height="480" />Results from different measurement devices are linked together and immediately forwarded by using mobile networks like GPRS and 3G to the healthcare provider, where they are available for review. Following the analysis, the healthcare professionals can send feedback back to your mobile phone. As a result, you not only remain informed about your health status via the information displayed on your mobile, but you can also quickly adapt your treatment, diet or exercise programme in response to the medical advice you receive from your healthcare provider.  In addition to this, you can even view the results on a list or have them displayed in a clear graphical form directly on the screen of the mobile device. This gives you an immediate overview of your treatment progress.<img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=306&file=viewing_health_params.jpg" border="0" alt="Viewing health parameters stored in smart phone - personal health diary" width="640" height="480" />Sounds quite far fetched? Not really, this is actually reality today and the presented eHealthMonitor application exists commercially for the Series40, Series60 and Series80 devices.Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Connectivity Enterprise Healthcare 2006-09-29T23:05:48Z ahoccc Symbian device control using muscle activity - a case study part 2 http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/09/30/symbian-device-control-using-muscle-activity-a-case-study-part-2 In my previous blog "<a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=198">Symbian device control using muscle activity - a case study</a>" I assumed that the reader is familiar with my older blog postings and I did not explain the motivation for muscle control case study.  I encountered questions about the rationality of the muscle control. The case was directly related to health and wellness as all my previous blog entries. The main reason to use EMG (electromyography) for controlling mobile is to give health exercises through motivating experiences like playing games. I like to call this "health entertainment". And with the EMG the user can be “guided” to use the actual muscles and not just e.g. to move the hand around (EMG should not be confused with motion sensor). There has been quite a lot of discussion how obesity is increasing amongst today young people. And what do young people like to do? Play games! My point was to bring another dimension to playing while improving your health and doing health exercises without even noticing it. EMG provides excellent approach for that. Surely in addition to EMG parameters like heartbeat, motion detected by goniometer and location information like GPS and also other parameters can be and most likely should be added to give optimal results for exercise while boosting the entertainment experience. Many of these are actually already use in sports related activities to measure effectiveness of the exercise.  So basically with goniometer I can add the ability to control x-y-coordinates e.g. by wrist movement and by heart beat monitoring I can add general stress measurement and by EMG I can add actual muscle activity monitoring. With all these only the imagination is the limit when thinking of possible use cases. And of course all these parameters can be monitored using wireless Bluetooth communications. Anyway my example case was limited to EMG only. And of course in professional health care this kind of EMG mobile solution could be used to rehabilitate person muscles when person has had e.g. some kind of slight paralysis and muscle training is needed. Motivating visual feedback speeds up the rehabilitation process. Person could perform trainings at own home and report results to clinic using mobile phone data transfer instead of visiting the clinic to do the exercises. Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Connectivity Entertainment Healthcare 2006-09-30T00:44:03Z ahoccc Thoughts from the Smartphone show: Healthcare with mobile devices, bird or fish? http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/10/28/thoughts-from-the-smartphone-show-healthcare-with-mobile-devices-bird-or-fish I visited the Smartphone in London and it was very interesting event indeed.   Along with the device manufacturers, there was good cross-section of companies working with the main stream applications. For my surprise there was even one healthcare related application (ECG monitoring) present in the Symbian stand. Or at least there should have been. When I asked about the healthcare application from the ladies at the Symbian stand, they were very confused. They pointed me to the each corner of the Symbian stand one after the other but still I didn’t manage to see the presentation (I just wonder if the application was present at all?).  Anyway it was very interesting to see people’s reactions when they asked what kind of business I am with. When I told that I am developing healthcare and personal wellbeing related applications almost everyone looked like they are going to ask: “Come again?” I was expecting this. Healthcare and personal wellbeing solutions with mobile devices are not part of the main stream development today and therefore these solutions are not very well known. But when I finished explaining and demonstrating, everyone thought that the use of mobile devices with health related applications is justified indeed. Especially the <a href="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=198">muscle control</a> (bicep control) demonstration seemed to interest everyone I demonstrated it.   One particularly memorable event in London was as follows. I had the bicep control demonstration with me (this time with the Bounce game and with the 3D Snakes game for Series60 3rd edition). At the Forum Nokia Pro evening reception I literarily hooked up one Nokia guy for the muscle control demonstration. I placed EMG electrodes to his both biceps and explained him how the MuscleControl application works. You should have seen the reaction when he played the Bounce game with his biceps. The genuine enthusiasm he presented as he played was the best feedback I needed to be convinced that this kind of “health entertainment” would be really accepted in general public as well.<img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=307&file=demonstration_setup.jpg" border="0" alt="Demonstration setup" width="640" height="480" />    As it seems that the healthcare solutions are strange for smart phone community, you might think that in the healthcare community smartphone solutions are widely known; not exactly. In November I will be participating world’s largest medical event <a href="http://www.medica.de/home_2/">Medica </a>2006 in Düsseldorf, Germany (15th – 18th November). Medica is really big event. The event takes 4 days and there are over 3600 exhibitors and over 136000 visitors (year 2005 statistics). Last year I got almost the same response in Medica for the healthcare applications with smartphones than in the Smartphone show. So based on my experience, healthcare applications utilizing smartphones are somewhere between the smartphone community and the healthcare community. This is one issue that makes this area so interesting. Every time I discuss with people about these solutions, I get different point of view to think of.  As said this much, I must say that I have really enjoyed talking with people about the “health visions” and all.Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>. Business Opportunities/Services Enterprise Entertainment Healthcare 2006-10-28T19:44:19Z ahoccc Using smart phones for preventing acute mountain sickness while maximizing high altitude training http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/arto-holopainens-forum-nokia-blog/2006/11/03/using-smart-phones-for-preventing-acute-mountain-sickness-while-maximizing-high-altitude-training Thinking outside-the-box again… Have you ever thought that smart phones could be used as an excellent tool to prevent altitude sickness while maximizing training performance? Here I will present a case that describes how all this is achieved. First some background to the subject. The effects of training and sleeping at high altitude on athletic performance have become an almost essential aspect of the preparation of world-class competitors. Training is performed usually over 2500m above sea level for several weeks. At this altitude, there is only 74% as much oxygen available as there is at sea level <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altitude_training">[wikipedia]</a>.Rapid accent to these high altitudes often results in the syndrome known as acute mountain sickness (AMS). AMS is not an independent illness but a combination of symptoms as the body tries to adapt to high altitude. At higher altitudes, blood oxygen saturation (%SpO2) decreases because of the reduced amount of oxygen in the air. So, one of the simplest indicators for AMS can be found by measuring saturated blood oxygen content <a href="http://www.nceht2006.org/NCeHT2006_Proceedings_.pdf">[M. Hassinen et al]</a>. Oxygen saturation can be measured with a pulse oximeter. Pulse oximeter tells you basically what percent of your hemoglobin molecules are carrying oxygen, commonly referred to as blood oxygen saturation (%SpO2). Pulse oximeters measure blood oxygen saturation in a non-invasive fashion usually from the fingertip.  Using Bluetooth enabled pulse oximeter with smart phone we can set up an effective tool for preventing AMS. Smart phone can continuously monitor blood oxygen saturation as well as heart rate level and give automated alerts if %SpO2 drops below given threshold. <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=294&file=blood_oxygen_saturation__spo2__measurement_setup_in_acute_mountain_sickness__ams__detection.jpg" border="0" alt="Blood oxygen saturation (%SpO2) measurement setup in acute mountain sickness (AMS) detection" width="640" height="480" />  To maximize training result we can combine additional EMG sensors and sport computer alongside pulse oximeter. All of these measurement devices are small, light-weighted and battery operated. Smart phone with suitable application can constantly monitor blood oxygen saturation, heart rate, muscle activity (EMG), location (GPS), altitude, speed, air pressure, temperature… Just with a quick look to your mobile phone you can get overview of your body and training state as well as information about your surroundings.           <img src="https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=295&file=using_smart_phone_to_maximize_high_altitude_training.jpg" border="0" alt="Using smart phone to maximize high altitude training" width="640" height="480" /> Does this sound absurd and futurism? It should not since all these can be used already today.  Find more related topics in my blogs <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=38462">here</a>.  Business Opportunities/Services Location Based Services Healthcare 2006-11-03T00:25:32Z ahoccc