Android Medical Technology: The Healthcare System Gets An Update

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) cards are becoming the foolproof way to securely and efficiently store patient data. No, doctors are not putting chips in your neck to track your geographic location (yet!), but they are placing these tags on samples that will be transported to another part of the hospital. Say you have a blood sample taken for evaluation, and it gets misplaced… This doesn’t happen often, but often enough to where RFID can eliminate the problem of mixing up patient evaluations. Scanning like a membership card, your sample is tagged and doctors can quickly bring up more than just your name in the lab or operating room.

University of Arlington in Texas is home to something called the Smart Hospital. In this amazing learning center, nursing students train in what looks like a real hospital…with real patients. But before you write the science fiction thriller, note that the patients are not real humans, they are a simulation. They are life-size, talking, breathing, pulse generating simulation humans (including children and infants). The technology allows professors to diagnose “simulation man” with a disease, or heart palpitations, or slowed breathing. Students react as they would in a real situation and “simulation man” is programmed to react realistically to that treatment. The stakes are as real as if the simulation was a human; students can save the patient’s life, but they can also cause him to flat-line. This learning environment simulates real world experiences using embedded systems.