ICT AND MEDICINE

BY: SAMIRA HAMOUD, ASHLEY EDWARDS & ANGELA PADILLA

ICT has made a big impact on medicine. Breakthroughs in information gathering, research, treatments, and communications have given medical providers new tools to work with and fresh ways to practice medicine.

CONTENTS

COMPUTERISED PATIENT RECORDS

PATIENT MONOTORING

MAGNETIC RESONANCE

IMAGING (MRI)

MEDICAL EXPERT SYSTEM

TELEMEDICINE

Computer axial tomography

scanning

COMPUTERISED PATIENT RECORDS

A system that contains electronically maintained information about an individual’s health status and care.  

It focuses on tasks directly related to patient care, unlike other healthcare information systems that support providers’ and

payers’ operational processes.

The CPR completely replaces the paper medical chart and thus must meet all clinical, legal and administrative requirements.

 

MEDICAL EXPERT SYSTEMWHAT IS AN EXPERT SYSTEM?

An expert system or knowledge-based system is computer software that attempts to act like a human expert on a particular subject area. An expert system is useful for providing support for

making decisions and can also ‘suggest’ alternatives or other issues to be considered.

HOW DOES IT WORK?An expert system is made up of two parts:

- A knowledge base- An inference engine

MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING (MRI)

An MRI (or magnetic resonance imaging) scan is a radiology technique that uses magnetism, radio waves, and a computer to

produce images of body structures.

The complex signals that come back from these huge machines are picked up by sensors and fed into a computer. The computer processes the data, then outputs full-colour images, sometimes in 3D, for the doctor, giving

views of the patient's body.

TELEMEDICINEa rapidly developing application of clinical medicine where medical

information is transferred through the phone or the Internet and sometimes other networks for the purpose of consulting, and

sometimes-remote medical procedures or examinations.

Types of Telemedicine:can be broken into three main categories: store-and-forward,

remote monitoring and interactive services.

PATIENT MONOTORINGWhen a patient is in hospital, they often require close monitoring. It is not

possible for a doctor or nurse to monitor patients continuously; so computerized monitors are used instead.

The sensors feed information back to a computer which processes the data:- Data is checked for any problems (e.g. pulse rate too low/high)

- Data is logged so that it can be checked later

Some patients must be continuously monitored in an intensive care unit. These patients are fitted with censors connected to a computer, which record vital signs such as blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and blood oxygen levels.

Computer axial tomography scanning

Pictures of structures within the body created by a computer that takes the data from multiple X-ray images and turns them in

pictures.

The machine sends out a thin X-ray beam at 160 different points. Crystals positioned at the opposite points of the beam pick up and record the

absorption rates of the varying thicknesses of tissue and bone. The data are then relayed to a computer that turns the information into a 2-

dimensional cross-sectional image.