PFI:BIC Making Full Use of the High-Resolution Image Capability of Smartphones to Collect Data through Ophthalmic Devices for Smart Mobile- and Tele-Health

亚利桑那大学的创新伙伴关系：建设创新能力（PFI:BIC）项目旨在将医疗保健扩展到患有眼病的偏远患者。移动医疗（M-Health）领域是移动技术和医疗保健的融合。其目的是将保健服务的范围扩大到生活在农村、偏远或孤立地区、无法常规获得保健服务的人。移动医疗允许在偏远的病人所在的地方进行有效的医疗分析和决策，而不是要求他们前往遥远的城市接受医疗护理。如果及早发现和治疗，眼外伤、青光眼和黄斑变性都是可预防的视力丧失的重要原因。提出了一系列设备，作为智能手机的医疗检查扩展。来访的医疗从业者将这种设备连接到智能手机上，并运行一个定制的应用程序，对眼睛的特定部位进行专门检查。通过WiFi或手机信号，智能手机应用程序将收集到的检查数据提交给远程“专家系统”，该系统提供深入的医学分析处理。分析结果几乎立即发送回来，并在屏幕上显示给医疗保健从业者。通过这种远程诊断过程，该项目提供了极大改善远程患者筛查和分诊的潜力。这将有助于确保未确诊的眼病患者及早被发现，并能及时安排去看眼科医生，以防止永久性的眼睛损伤。建立这种远程医疗模式的结果将使最需要的人获得医疗保健。该项目通过为当前和未来基于智能手机的眼科检查设备创建基于服务器的远程诊断分析功能，建立了一个智能眼科服务平台，其中三种设备将在该项目中开发：显微镜扩展，全视检眼镜和便携式狭缝灯。这种功能将允许这些设备收集的检查数据通过无线方式发送到远程服务器进行自动分析，分析结果将发送回原始智能手机。这种基于服务器的远程诊断分析功能允许远程专家或基于自动机器的对提交的图像数据进行深入评估和诊断。这之所以成为可能，是因为智能手机无处不在，而且与互联网相连。这种功能可以实现实时和存储转发远程咨询，并与其他卫生专业人员进行沟通，以便在方便或可能的情况下及时进行全面诊断。这些手持设备将使现场检查成为可能，否则这些检查将仅限于临床环境（例如医务室和诊所）。与最先进的眼科设备相比，拟议的设备将小型化，便携，甚至可供临床环境以外的非专业人员使用。在项目启动之初，合作伙伴是牵头机构亚利桑那大学（生物医学工程系、电子与计算机工程系、眼科与视觉科学系）和一家小公司breult， Inc.（亚利桑那州图森市）。更广泛的合作伙伴是Tech Launch Arizona（亚利桑那大学技术转移办公室）和加州理工学院。

This Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) project from the University of Arizona is designed to extend healthcare to remote patients suffering from eye diseases. The field of Mobile Health, or M-Health, is the merging of mobile technology and healthcare. Its purpose is to extend the reach of healthcare services to people living in rural, remote, or isolated areas who do not have routine access to healthcare. M-Health allows for effective medical analyses and decisions to be made where remote patients are located, rather than requiring them to travel to a distant city to receive medical care. Ocular trauma, glaucoma, and macular degeneration are all significant causes of preventable vision loss, if detected and treated early. A series of devices is proposed which act as medical examination extensions to a smartphone. A visiting healthcare practitioner attaches such a device to a smartphone and runs a custom app to perform a specialized examination of specific portions of the eye. Using a WiFi or cell signal, the smartphone app submits the collected examination data to a remote "expert system," which provides in-depth medical analysis processing. The analysis results are sent back almost immediately and are displayed onscreen to the healthcare practitioner. Through this process of telediagnosis, the project offers the potential of greatly improving remote patient screening and triage. It will help to ensure that patients with undiagnosed eye diseases are detected early and can arrange to visit an ophthalmologist in time to prevent permanent eye damage. The result of establishing this paradigm of remote medical care will extend healthcare to those most in need.The project establishes a smart service platform in ophthalmology by creating a server-based telediagnostic analysis capability for current and future smartphone-based ophthalmic examination devices, three of which are to be developed in this effort: a microscopic extension, a panoptic ophthalmoscope, and a portable slit lamp. This capability would allow examination data, gathered with such devices, to be sent wirelessly to a remote server for automated analysis, the results of which would be sent back to the originating smartphone. This server-based telediagnostic analysis capability allows for either tele-expert or automated machine-based in-depth evaluation and diagnosis of the submitted image data. This is made possible because smartphones are ubiquitous and Internet-connected. This capability enables both real-time and store-and-forward teleconsultation and communication to other health professionals for a full diagnosis later in time when convenient or possible. These handheld devices will enable field-conducted examinations that are otherwise restricted to clinical settings (e.g., medical offices and clinics). Compared to state-of-the-art ophthalmic equipment, the proposed devices will be miniaturized, portable, and usable even by non-specialists outside clinical settings.At the inception of the project, the partners are the lead institution, University of Arizona (Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering and Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science), and a small business, Breault, Inc. (Tucson, AZ). Broader context partners are Tech Launch Arizona (University of Arizona, Office of Technology Transfer) and California Institute of Technology.