Automated phone service records health
The concept of recording an older person’s health measurements via an automated telephone service for later analysis has won the Hack Ageing hackathon held in Melbourne at the weekend.
TeleXHealth’s Bob Zhou, Lisa Corcoran, Andreas Limberopoulos, Rebecca Martin, and Tahir Tanveer.
Organised by IBM and health technology agency HealthXL, the hackathon is aimed at developing solutions that will improve the quality of life for the elderly in the areas of dementia, malnutrition, social isolation and physical activity.
As part of the event, more than 150 clinicians, software developers, hardware engineers, designers, businesspeople and consumers work directly with health experts from HealthXL, Melbourne's Northern Health and Alzheimer’s Australia, along with health researchers and technical experts from IBM.
The eventual winner was the TeleXHealth team, which came up with the idea of a solution that could enable elderly people to confidentially share key information about their health, such as weight, blood sugar and blood pressure, through an automated telephone service.
The information would then be digitally recorded, analysed and tracked on a dashboard, and accessed via a mobile application by the patient, their doctor, family or carer.
The TeleXHealth team will now work with clinicians and community care providers to refine and complete a prototype of their solution for trialling with patient groups.
TeleXHealth will also be invited to present its solution to 100 digital health experts at the next HealthXL global gathering, being held in Munich in September.
TeleXHealth team leader, Andreas Limberopoulos, says talking with the elderly people and aged care experts during the event provided his team with great insight, a real-life understanding of their lives and the challenges faced.
“We were able to design a solution that we know can be easily used by elderly people, yet provides their carer with the information they need to better manage their health remotely,” Mr Limberopoulos says.
Other category winners include 'Olive', which is aimed at ensuring the safety of elderly people driving, enabling them to remain mobile and independent for longer. By monitoring and tracking information about the vehicle and the driver behaviour, such as location, speed, braking and distant from other vehicles, health professionals, carers and family can be confident of the person’s driving ability.
There was also 'Heston', an online application that can be used by dieticians to create personalised meal plans to help tackle malnutrition in elderly people. The solution analyses a range of personal information on each patient including previous and current medical history, food likes and dislikes and weight goals.
Find out more about the Hack Ageing hackathon.
