Institute For The Future

Consumer ultrasounds: looking inside yourself from the comfort of home

Brian Dolan at MobiHealthNews has an interesting post on the future of "consumerization of medical devices." GE Healthcare recently released Vscan, an $8000 ultra-mobile ultrasound device; in a few years, it is possible that patients will have similar hand-held devices in their homes. They will be able to scan themselves and send the images to their doctors (or other medical professional) for analysis.

 

So what's wrong with that? It sounds like a great example of the potential of mobile health, in general, and rural or remote health in particular. But not every one agrees, and some are quite virulent in their reactions. Dolan notes that "some sonographers believe that’s idiotic, moronic, dangerous, highly irresponsible, 'right up there with in-utero glamor shots,' and 'the worst idea I have heard of.'” He includes a number of blog comments that offer these remarks.

 

 

Eric Topol, the West Wireless Health Institute’s Chief Medical Officer, responds:

I am surprised about the harsh comments above regarding patients acquiring their own ultrasound and transmitting the image to their physician. This is how screening for breast cancer will be done someday in the future, as ultrasound is an order of magnitude more sensitive than mammography. For patients with congestive heart failure who develop symptoms, this would be invaluable to sort out the actual cause of decompensation. The comments above do not give adequate credit to consumers who can be quickly taught how to properly place an ultrasound probe on their body and acquire a suitable image. This has nothing to do with interpretation of the image. In the future these naysayers will figure it out thanks to consumer driven health care. The same response was mounted many years ago when home external defibrillators were being developed. Now these are widely used with the right patients and in the right circumstances

Patients have learned how to do everything from give themselves injections to hook up to a dialysis machine at home. It seems reasonable to imagine that someone could be taught how to use one of these ultrasound devices as well. Nobody is suggesting that they will be reading or interpreting the images, just transmitting them. It is sad that the sonographers feel so threatened.

I am excited about the possibilities this presents for bringing medical support to people in communities who otherwise would have limited access to such care. And think about all of the chronically ill or mobility-challenged patients who will now be able to provide their doctors with vital health information from home.

It turns out that GE is not alone in developing this kind of device. In fact, consider what it would look like if you could hook up an ultrasound probe to your cell phone. Last year, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) did just that. They unveiled commercial USB ultrasound probes they have developed that are compatible with Microsoft Windows mobile-based smartphones, thanks to a $100,000 grant Microsoft they had received from Microsoft. They are excited about the possibilities, too:

 

You can carry around a probe and cell phone and image on the fly now. Imagine having these smartphones in ambulances and emergency rooms. On a larger scale, this kind of cell phone is a complete computer that runs Windows. It could become the essential computer of the Developing World, where trained medical personnel are scarce, but most of the population, as much as 90 percent, have access to a cell phone tower. (William Richard, PhD, WUSTL associate professor of computer science and engineering)

 

Twenty-first century medicine is defined by medical imaging. Yet 70 percent of the world's population has no access to medical imaging. It's hard to take an MRI or CT scanner to a rural community without power. (David Zar, research associate in computer science and engineering)

 

The device also has applications for home use for children with Muscular Dystrophy.

The idea is that caregivers, who otherwise have to transport a young person, often wheelchair bound, to a hospital or clinic on a regular basis for examination, can be trained to do ultrasound to track muscle condition. This could lower the dosage to the least effective amount to further increase quality of life of the patient and the caregiver and hopefully extend life. We're really excited about this application. The caregiver would only have to do a one-minute scan, transfer the data captured to the clinic, and the results would come back to the caregiver. (Zar)