Technology Research

Integrated Medical Diagnostic Technologies (IMDT) platform technology: Digital Doc
Technology overview

Digital Doc integrates advanced medical diagnostic technologies, such as EKG's (electrical waveform of the heart), pulse oximetry (blood oxygen level), and spirometry (lung function), with off the shelf technologies, such as laptops, desktops, and PDA's. By simply downloading software on a computer and inserting a specially designed PCMCIA card (PC Card), everyday off the shelf technology is converted to life saving medical technology not previously available to rural areas and underdeveloped countries. The PC Card is designed with an analog to digital interface that has ports to attach leads to acquire the patient's data.
Evolution of technology

Currently, medical device companies spend millions of dollars to design stand alone medical devices-devices that perform one function and do not integrate with other equipment. While these companies develop proprietary technology for the acquisition of various patient parameters such as cardiac and pulmonary function, much of the cost to develop these devices goes into developing the processing component similar to that found in personal computers. These devices offer valuable benefits to the patients and medical providers, however, they are very expensive to build and the data acquired is not easily integrated with other data from different devices. The cost of these devices ranges from $2,000-$50,000 each, denying health care providers and patients in rural and underdeveloped countries access to state-of-the-art medical diagnostic technologies. This roadblock to affordable healthcare was the catalyst for IMDT to develop Digital Doc. By separating the proprietary component of various technologies and incorporating them into PC Cards and developing software to allow the PC Cards to communicate to the off the shelf processor, tremendous savings in cost could be achieved. IMDT began by developing separate cards, first Spirometry, then EKG and Pulse Oximetry, that cost roughly $150 each to produce. This allowed a retail cost of $600 each, well below that of stand alone units. The data from each of the PC Cards could be stored on the hard drive and easily integrated into other medical information systems.
Present Applications

Recently, IMDT has developed an integrated PC Card that offers all three technologies on one card. The cost is roughly $250 to produce and has a retail cost of $1000. This further reduces the cost to the consumer and increases the profit margin to the company.

Future Applications

New technologies are being developed such as blood pressure monitors, CO2 analyzers, and glucose monitors. Better software is also being developed to analyze the data and incorporate it into medical record systems. This will allow health care providers easier access to data of their patient.