The man is strolling through an area that vaguely resembles part of the UBC campus, but is in fact a plaza in Edmonton. Only his head and shoulders fit onto the screen that our group is watching. The wires of his earphones sway gently from side to side as he walks. His expression is one of focused concentration. We can’t see the iPad 3 that he’s staring at, but we can see the image that it’s displaying: a high-fidelity, three-dimensional scan of a patient’s head and torso, complete with nerves snaking out of the base of the spinal column.
“This is your doctor,” says Allen Devine, the narrator of today’s tour. “Where is he?” He pauses for the group to respond. Most remain silent, still watching the screen intently, but one offers a response: “Edmonton.”
“Edmonton,” Allen Devine confirms. “Good answer. Better answer? Don’t care.” For patients who are homebound, living in remote communities, or simply unable to find time to travel to a specialist, remote consultation is a novel way of accessing medical services.
Ubiquitous health care (“anywhere, any time”) is part of the vision of developers at the Telus Innovation Centre, where twenty 16- to 18-year olds spent a recent Monday afternoon. These teenagers are participants in the second annual UBC eHealth Summer Camp. Their visit to the Telus Innovation Centre started off a week of hands-on learning about mobile health apps, patient simulators, and other types of health technology.
Over the course of a ninety-minute tour, the group was shown a wide assortment of technologies adapted for use in health care. Overburdened nurses seemed a likely target for one piece of software, a handy mobile application that tracked distant patients’ vital signs and created prioritized, colour-coded lists of those needing attention.
Another device was designed to support high-quality image transmission. The demo featured a high-resolution image of chronic leg wounds in all their suppurating glory, and drew reactions ranging from fascinated delight to barely suppressed disgust. The next toy our presenter brought out was an augmented reality tool that displayed text and short videos when pointed at items that it recognized. A poster of Justin Bieber was used to demonstrate this feature (once again, campers’ expressions ranged from enthusiastic to borderline nauseous).
What else? There was the video-game like Fitnect, which allows players to try on clothing (the original version) or to work with a remote physiotherapist to improve range of motion (the Telus-modified version). There was a gaze-detecting screen for targeted public health announcements; an eerily knowledgeable home monitoring system with automatic alerts for patient falls; and much, much more. The Telus Innovation Centre is the health informatics equivalent of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory – though Monday’s tour was mercifully unmarred by Augustus Gloop-style mishaps.
Technology isn’t an instant solution to Canada’s health care problems, as students will learn during their week at the eHealth Summer Camp. But there are opportunities here. The group was given a parting challenge as they left the Telus Innovation Centre on their first day of camp: “Look for something you can make better.” Once they find something that can be made better, the next step is to figure out how to make it better. After this week, they’ll be better equipped to do so.
For more information about the eHealth Summer Camp and the eHealth Young Innovators Program, please visit http://www.ehealthinnovators.ca/.