Medical Tablet PC: MioCARE

MioCARE, which was launched on 5 September, is the first medical tablet PC. It was designed by MiTAC International Corp., MitTAC Informational Corp., and National Yang-Ming University. It is equipped with 320 million pixels camera, 6-inch touch screen, and wifi. Besides, medical staff can sterilize it with 75% alcohol. Now, it is running in Taipei City Hospital, and some medical staff use MioCARE for their daily work.

MioCARE has three medical systems. The first thing is the long-term care system. There are a lot of long-term care assessment scales in the system such as comprehensive geriatric assessment(CGA), activity of daily living(ADL), and instrumental activity of daily living(IADL). The second thing is the hemodialysis care system. The staff of hemodialysis center can record the vital signs of patients in the MioCARE, and the manager can over view all of patients’ vital signs. The third thing is the chemotherapy drug delivery system. Medical staff can use MioCARE’s camera to read bar code of the patient and his medicine for making sure the patient follows his prescription, and they can use it to read the patients’ prescription.

MioCARE has three core functions such as reading & writing, reminding staff, and checking prescriptions. First, medical staff can read or write some information on MioCARE. Second, MioCARE can remind medical staff to follow the SOP or to deliver medicine to patients. Third, medical staff can use MioCARE to quickly make sure the patient follows his prescription.

When medical staff implement some of MioCARE features, it stops the necessity for paperwork. However, staff must use this, instead of paper. Unless hospitals have a policy to reduce the use of paper, it will be useless. Moreover, MioCARE makes medical staff can get real-time information, but only few care services need real-time data. Although, the some features of MioCARE are pretty good. One is that it can be sterilized by 75% alcohol. Another is that medical staff use it to quickly make sure the patient follows his prescription. To sum up, I think these are core advantages in a medical market.

Reference：MioCARE醫療平板 健康智慧全Hold住！
http://www.sogi.com.tw/newforum/article_list.aspx?Topic_id=6174405

What is Telehealth ??

According to Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition, telehealth is “the use of telecommunication technologies to provide health care services.” After the prosperity of telecommunication technologies, telehealth will become a popular business in the next ten years. Health professionals discussing one case via telecommunications is one kind of telehealth. Besides, transmitting medical or surgical information or images to provide clinical care is also one kind of telehealth, but it is usually called “telemedicine.” By the way, it is easy to confuse telehealth with telemedicine. Telemedicine is one kind of telehealth, but telemedicine particularly refers to providing clinical care. We will need more efficient ways to take care of the elderly such as telehealth, because the population of the elderly are growing. As a result of a large amount of data from people’s vital signs, health service providers need to spend a lot of time reading an extremely huge group of people’s data. Telehealth is a good way to deal with the health of the elderly. Moreover, by using telehealth, it is easy to increase the health awareness of the elderly. The elderly would follow the good health guidelines, and they will become more healthy. In addition, by using telehealth, it is easy to train and educate the elderly how to have a healthy body. To sum up, telehealth will become a hot trend because the number of elderly population who want to have good health are going up.

Who Will Buy the BabyBot (Telehealth Device)?

Consumers will not buy the BabyBot without service providers because it is a meaninglessness. So, customers of BabyBot are health care service providers. The National Taiwan University Hospital, who is one of BabyBot’s customers, is worth of telehealth service providers because their business model is innovative. Most important is a few consumers willing to pay they for the telehealth service. First, their consumers are not normal people. Patients who have a cardiovascular disease, a heart failure disease, or a chronic disease are their customers because they need telehealth device to record their vital signs and to send the data to the National Taiwan University Hospital. The medicine staff can monitor the data of patients’ vital signs in the hospital without going to the patients’ house. Moreover, the telehealth package includes a telehealth device and a telehealth service. The National Taiwan University Hospital rents BabyBot to the customers and they provide health care service to the customers. Then, they will charge the total monthly fee. In 2010, they provided only package that included all of BabyBot devices and the total monthly fee was NT5’000. In 2011, they provide five packages. One of the packages includes a sphygmomanometer and a ECG recorder and the total monthly fee is NT3’900. To sum up, health care service providers are the customers of BabyBot.

Telehealth Center of National Taiwan University Hospital
http://www.ntuh.gov.tw/telehealth/default.aspx