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A local physician is building a tabletop “medical data collection device” that he hopes will do for patient management what ATMs did for finance.
The medical kiosk, dubbed the Health Care 360, is meant to reduce the time and cost of health screenings or routine doctor visits — especially for patients with chronic health conditions. “The way we deliver traditional health care is a bit antiquated. It’s based on face-to-face interaction between the doctors and the patient,” said Ronald Dixon, director of the Virtual Practice Project at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital department of medicine, and the leader of the six-person kiosk project.
The current beta, developed with five hardware and software experts, is a 2-foot-by-4-foot Windows-based tabletop machine. The patient uses a touchscreen to submit information that is sent to a central computer via a network link. The kiosk poses questions to patients about their dietary and exercise habits, and patients can input vital signs and data such as weight. The kiosk has an attached cuff that can be used for blood pressure testing. It can also be used in blood testing, but the current protoype would require someone to place a blood sample in the device, explained Dixon.
Dixon has been developing prototypes of the Health Care 360 since 2007. For cash, Dixon has taken $186,000 in grants from the Boston-based nonprofit Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT).
The kiosk isn’t the only remote screening device in existence. Reno, Nev.-based Computerized Screening Inc. (CSI) already makes medical testing kiosks. Dixon noted, however, the Health 360 is unique in that it will be able to deliver immediate results for its tests, the interface has been optimized based on his own research, and the device is considerably smaller than other kiosks, which can be as large as a photo booth.
The Health Care 360, conceptually, could allow doctors to focus primarily on patients who need personal attention, said Gregg Myer, a physician and senior vice president of quality and safety at MGH. The device could be deployed in a variety of places: in a hospital, at a retail medical clinic drugstore, or even in a company, for employee use, he said.
In June, the U.K. National Health Service will do a test deployment of Health Care 360 to screen people for vascular disease, Dixon said.
At a Glance
Health Care 360
What is it: Networked tabletop medical machine for patient data collection
Lead researcher: Ronald Dixon
Project launched: 2007
Team: Dixon and five experts in software and hardware
Funding: $186,000 from CIMIT grants
Milestones: Will be tested in U.K. in June; Commercialization planned for 2010
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