NEW SMARTPHONE TECHNOLOGY COULD IMPROVE HEALTH CARE IN DEVELOPING NATIONS

HOUSTON, July 15 -- The University of Texas System Health Science Center at Houston issued the following news release:

New smartphone technology developed at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston could play a role in advancing the quality of health care in developing nations where medical services can be scarce.

The new technology includes an application with easy-to-follow medical guidelines that can be loaded onto smartphones based on Windows Mobile and used by community health workers in remote areas to diagnose and treat various medical conditions. A smartphone is a cellphone with personal computer like capabilities. The application is called GuideView.

Community health workers provide a large portion of health care in developing nations and many have smartphones or can access them, according to M. Sriram Iyengar, Ph.D., GuideView inventor and an assistant professor at The University of Texas School of Health Information Sciences at Houston.

In some areas, community health workers have limited medical training and are prone to errors. For example, a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that community health workers in a developing nation make errors in diagnosis and treatment as much as 62 percent of the time.

Iyengar believes GuideView could help reduce those mistakes by giving community health workers step-by-step, rich media instructions for a host of medical conditions affecting children and adults. Rich media refers to voice, images, video and text.

"If you give the information in small steps, it is easier for people to follow," Iyengar said. "We expect better results in terms of compliance and reduced errors."

GuideView was recently tested in the Human Patient Simulation Laboratory at the University of Antioquia Medical School in Medellin, Colombia, and Iyengar called the preliminary results encouraging.

Fifty community health workers in Colombia used GuideView to treat medical conditions simulated by sophisticated, life-size mannequins. Ninety five percent said they would use this technology in their daily practice and 95 percent said they perceived the technology as useful.

Iyengar and one of his collaborators, Jose Florez-Arango, M.D., a doctoral student at the UT School of Health Information Sciences, also compared how well the Colombian health workers performed when using GuideView and when using a printed version of the instructions, which are based on World Health Organization, Colombian Ministry of Health and the Colombian Association for Prehospital Care protocols of care. "They performed much better with GuideView," Florez-Arango said.

Here is how GuideView works. If for example someone complains of irritated eyes, the community health worker would access GuideView on his or her smartphone and get step-by-step instructions on diagnosing and treating the condition.

Depending on the medical condition, there could be as many as 225 steps. If at any time the medical condition is deemed serious or life threatening, the application is programmed to dial the closest emergency service.

The GuideView application and contents can be stored on a smartphone so that neither Internet access nor the smartphone network is required. It also records the steps taken so they can be reviewed later. Before the application can be given to community health workers, additional tests will be required to measure patient acceptance, outcomes and adherence, Florez-Arango said.

Iyengar and Florez-Arango are working on versions of GuideView for iPhones, Blackberries and other types of smartphone technologies. The GuideView system also includes GuideView Author, a graphical system to create procedure steps and embed rich media in each step. "This can be used by individuals to create GuideViews for multiple purposes like troubleshooting electronic devices," Iyengar said.

Iyengar came up with the idea for GuideView while helping NASA develop a medical instruction program that astronauts could use on extended missions. Initial funding was through NASA and the United States Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.

Iyengar recently received a grant from Microsoft for the project. The Office of Technology Management at the UT Health Science Center at Houston facilitated a UT System Ignition Fund grant to further develop the technology toward a commercial product. GuideView is a product of a UT Health Science Center portfolio company called Advanced Guidance Systems LLC.For more information please contact: Sarabjit Jagirdar, Email:- htsyndication@hindustantimes.com.

Rob Cahill, 713/500-3030, Robert.Cahill@uth.tmc.edu.