Impacts of mobile devices in medical environment

Lucas Machado

School of Information Sciences,

University of Tampere,

Tampere, Finland

machadolucas@me.com

December 17, 2013

1 Introduction

With the advent of computers and databases, data

that was traditionally stored in paper started to be

digitalized and stored electronically. In hospitals and

health systems, patient records could be accessed

from terminals by doctors and nurses, magnifying the

systems capacity and mitigating records errors.

The arrival and popularization of internet also

changed some interactions, allowing for exemple, pa-

tients to access exam results in their homes and even

communicating with doctors.

The recent popularization of mobile devices is also

changing the interactions in medical environments, as

they provide access of information to lots of people

practically anywhere, also giving new possibilities of

intelligent use of it with analysis of data an genera-

tion of visualizations, gathering of information by the

device’s sensors and new interactive and data manip-

ulation possibilities. This report aims to analyze the

use and impacts of mobile devices in medical envi-

ronments and health appliances.

2 Mobile devices appliances in

medical environments

The medical environment has several applications in

which mobile devices can be used, improving of pa-

tients and doctors with data. In the literature re-

search of this report, four main areas of uses were

found: Uses by patients[1, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13], uses by

doctors, nurses and medicine students[3, 10], uses as

physical paper replacement[5, 9], and uses as interac-

tion and visualization of data[2, 4, 9].

Patients can use mobile devices to find informa-

tion about health, for example with the Symptomia

App[13] or other sources in Internet. These devices

have a bigger penetration in areas that don’t have

enough access to health systems and doctors, so they

provide health to people in a social aspect. Devices

with sensors like the iPhone can also be used to mon-

itore data from patients like heart rate[6] and detect

problems like Parkinson’s disease[8] and even help in

physiotherapy and rehabilitation of hands in post-

stroke conditions[11].

Doctors and hospitals - and the environment - can

benefit with less use of printed paper and visual-

ization of health records in mobile devices, specially

tablets. According to [?], doctors also gain mobility

with their use, instead of accessing data only in termi-

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nals. Medicine students as well as doctors also have

the benefit of easy and ubiquitous access to medicine

databases for reference and learning[3, 10].

Beyond all of that, the powerful capacities of cur-

rent mobile devices along with the interaction possi-

bilities given by touch screen technology provides a

rich opportunity to generate data visualization, anal-

ysis and manipulation. As an example, doctors can

download patients exam results as 3D models and in-

teract with them as wasn’t easily possible before[2].

Doctors could also collect data from patients in re-

altime and generate statistics to achieve diagnostics

and conclusions.

3 Results of the literature re-

search

The studied users were basically patients and doctors,

as they are the people affected with the use of mobile

devices. However, all humans in some moment could

be considered at least as patients and therefore, all

the humans are potential users of this technologies.

Grouping the researched studies by which ques-

tions were asked in them in five genetical questions,

we have “1 - How can mobile devices help in medical

environment?”[1, 8, 12, 13], “2 - Is the device accurate

to capture and measure health signals?”[6, 7],“3 - Can

iPad help in post-stroke hand rehabilitation?”[11],

“4 - Does mobile devices help students in learn-

ing about medicine?”[2, 10] and “5 - How tablets

changed doctors interaction with electronic health

records?”[2, 4, 5, 9]. Most of the studies considered

are related to the first and to the last question, point-

ing to the importance of these devices as general in

changing the medical environment.

Depending of the question, a research method was

applied. For the questions 1, 2, and 3, testing of

devices and accessories and comparison with tradi-

tional health monitoring methods was applied[1, 6,

7, 8, 11, 12, 13]. For questions 1, 2, 4 and 5, test-

ing apps, devices and accessories use with users were

performed[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13]. For

questions 1, 4 and 5, interviews and questionaries

were conducted, as well analysis of other studies and

bibliography[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13].

The main research results achieved by analyzing

the results and conclusion of the articles along with

their implications and motivations, are that the use

of devices and technology improves the data visual-

ization by patients and doctors through new inter-

actions with information, devices like the iPhone are

sufficiently accurate to be health monitors, and apps

in mobile devices can bring knowledge to patients and

students in a broader and more accessible way. The

necessity of further studies in this subject can also

be concluded, as with these benefits comes new chal-

lenges and issues like privacy and security in digital

data management and transmission.

All the studies analyzed with similar theme results

converged that mobile devices are very good as appli-

ances to medical environment and they can already

be used nowadays. The further development of these

devices and bigger adoption of them in medical en-

vironment can also lead to other interesting future

uses.

It was found some variations between the research

results about some of the articles showing the wor-

ries about the privacy and security issues and other

ignoring these issues.

The article [4] also stated that “Handheld devices

will become an essential medical tool”. This is be-

cause this specific article is quite old (from 2003) and

at that time it was just the beginning of mobile de-

vices adoption - the mobile devices weren’t so ad-

vanced too, and had several limitations along with

the lack of good internet connections and access to

data as we have nowadays.

4 Conclusion

In the next years, we should see mobile devices more

and more integrated in our lives and in our tasks.

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They are always capturing, manipulating, and allow-

ing us to interact with information in a way we never

did before. Our common experiences are turned in

sources of data to intelligent analysis, and we are of-

fered ubiquitous and fast information access.

The medical environment is also taking benefit of

this technologies to offer its own focused services and

appliances to patients and doctors. The new inter-

actions that the devices can provide will change the

way we see medicine in the next few years.

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