Freescale streamlines health screenings with portable medical kiosk

GUADALAJARA, MEXICO: As the population continues to age and medical monitoring becomes more integrated into everyday living, healthcare professionals are constantly striving to find new ways to monitor patients with improved accuracy, speed and end-user convenience.

Taking an active part in this initiative, Freescale Semiconductor, partnering with Pounce Consulting, developed a portable, easy-to-use telemonitoring reference design, which allows patients and physicians to run routine health screenings at home or remotely. Grant funding for the reference design came from the Jalisco State Secretariat of Economic Development and the National Council of Science and Technology.

Dubbed the Intelligent Hospital kiosk, this is a prime example of Freescale’s efforts to help improve patient care and lower health care costs by driving innovation and enabling medical device manufacturers to leverage the latest technology available.

Patients can use the kiosk as a monitor at home to send their personal vital signs and medical tests remotely to a healthcare provider in order to proactively monitor and prevent acute complications of chronic degenerative diseases. In addition, the kiosk can be made available in a public location for individuals to perform various medical tests and transmit data to a hospital.

The recently announced Flexis MM family drives nine different medical devices on the reference design, reducing analog costs and noise interference. The devices include: a weight scale, an ultrasonic height sensor, a thermometer, a blood pressure monitor, a heart rate monitor, a one-lead electrocardiography EKG, a pulse oximeter, a blood glucose meter and a spirometer to measure lung volumes and air flow.

The kiosk features a touch-sensing interface to toggle between different modes of operation which creates a cutting edge user experience while leaving the contact surfaces smooth for easy cleaning and disinfecting. A magnetic card reader identifies patient data which is transmitted via USB or Zigbee to a PC or a server where an electronic medical record (EMR) can be stored.

In a recent test using the Intelligent Hospital kiosk, a physician ran the full screening in an average time of seven minutes per patient for a total of 67 patients, while diagnosing five health conditions that were not detected in an initial screening.

“It’s great to see technology companies like Freescale using their innovative products to solve real issues within the context of healthcare,” said Alonso Ulloa Velez, director of the Economic Secretariat for Economic Affairs for the state of Jalisco. “Globally, people are living longer and innovation like this from Freescale is going to be necessary to give people the proper level of care without increasing cost.”

“By integrating common medical monitoring devices with medical grade connectivity and IT systems, we believe we can help lower the cost and improve patient health screenings to reduce major health complications,” said Dr. José Fernández Villaseñor, physician, surgeon and electrical engineer for Freescale Semiconductor. “Freescale’s new Flexis MM family is the foundation of the Intelligent Hospital demo and can speed delivery of patient diagnostics to a hospital or healthcare provider.”

Utilizing its own Tower Design System to develop the kiosk, Freescale also partnered with Pounce Consulting, an information technology services firm that provide OEMs with a customizable platform to develop their own medical equipment. Freescale also used touch sensors to help reduce costs and increase mechanical design flexibility.