In a project carried out within the framework of the Center for Digital Diagnostics (ZDD), Fraunhofer IESE is conducting research together with its project partners on an ecosystem for health data in rural areas.
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The lack of physicians in rural areas is a serious problem in our society. Fast and regular medical care for acutely or chronically ill patients is therefore often associated with great effort for those affected. In the worst case, health problems are not detected early enough, or the spread of infectious diseases is not contained in time. Telemedical digital care of these patients is often not possible due to non-availability of the diagnostics required for medical decision-making.
In the project “Neighborhood Diagnostics”, these challenges are to be addressed by a Digital Ecosystem. At the core of this Digital Ecosystem is the combination of wearables, smart medical devices, and health stations designed to capture potentially relevant health data such as heart rate, gait stability, or falls. The goal is to use this data to diagnose diseases and then either request a doctor’s appointment or laboratory diagnostics for the patient. In this way, clarity about disease patterns and contagious courses of a disease is to be provided quickly and easily. The project also aims to develop a completely automated health station intended to enable professional medical diagnostics in sparsely populated regions. The health station will automate the entire process of sample collection, sample preparation, and performance of diagnostic tests on the sample material. Triggered by the medical staff – e.g., after a phone consultation – the person to be treated will visit a health station at any time. There, samples will be taken in an automated manner and analyzed for the relevant diagnostic parameters. The results will be made available digitally to the person to be treated and to the medical staff, so that improved treatment decisions can be made.
Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE