SBIR Phase II: Point-of-Care Patient Photography Integrated with Medical Imaging

小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是广泛采用一种高效且可访问的技术，将患者照片与放射图像相结合，以改善患者安全、提高医疗效率，并重新将放射科医生与患者联系起来。成功的商业化成果是，这种采用通过改善患者安全和医院质量直接节省了医疗保健成本；即使放射科医生的效率提高10%，也可以节省医疗保健约9亿美元。这项新技术的更广泛影响是，它可以为数百种新的数字医疗设备产生的数字数据提供患者身份验证。任何这些数字数据都可能最终出现在错误患者的医疗记录中，身份验证至关重要。智能远程医疗系统的快速发展带来了这样的危险，即患者可能会变成纯粹的数据，但这些照片可以将解读医生的注意力重新回到患者身上，通过以患者为中心的护理来改善结果。这项技术通过允许医生在深入研究和探索解剖、生理和分子水平的数据之前与患者建立联系来实现这一点。这个小企业创新研究第二阶段项目将无缝且安全地集成放射患者识别系统，通过避免可预防的错误来提高患者的安全性，并提高吞吐量。这种变革性的方法克服了现有患者识别方法的失败，同时利用嵌入式摄像系统的能力来改善患者护理。在该奖项下，将开发在X光和CT采集期间自动同时获取和嵌入患者的音频和视频数据的技术。具体地说，将完成以下目标：1)开发一个成熟的软件框架，使系统能够快速扩展到大量医院；2)将系统扩展到CT扫描仪和固定式X光机；3)通过增加红外立体图像捕获来提高图像质量，确保即使在微光环境下获取的照片也具有附加值；4)增强具有视频和音频功能的相机，这将改善患者的识别能力，同时收集丰富的临床信息；以及5)完善照片采集的触发方法。长期目标是通过在医学成像研究中嵌入内在的、外部可见的生物特征识别器来提高错误患者差错的检测率；并通过减少口译时间来增加口译医生的吞吐量。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is the widespread adoption of an efficient and accessible technology to integrate patient photographs with radiology images to improve patient safety, increase healthcare efficiency, and reconnect radiologists with their patients. A successful commercialization outcome is this adoption leading to direct cost-savings in healthcare by improving patient safety and hospital quality; even a 10% improvement in radiologists' efficiency leads to healthcare savings of ~$900 million. The broader impact of this novel technology is that it can provide patient authentication for the digital data being generated by hundreds of new digital medical devices. Any of this digital data could end up in the wrong patient's medical record and authentication is crucial. Rapid advances in smart, telehealth systems present the danger that patients can turn into mere data, but these photographs can return the interpreting physician's focus to the patient, leading to improved outcomes through patient-centered care. The technology achieves this by allowing doctors to connect with the patient as a person before diving deep and exploring data at anatomic, physiologic and molecular levels.This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project will seamlessly and securely integrate a radiology patient identification system to improve patient safety, by avoiding preventable errors, and enhance throughput. This transformative approach overcomes the failure of existing patient identification methods while harnessing the power of an embedded camera system to improve patient care. Technology to automatically and simultaneously obtain and embed audio and video data of the patient during X-ray and CT acquisition will be developed under this award. Specifically, the following objectives will be completed: 1) develop a mature software framework for rapid system scalability to a large number of hospitals, 2) expand the system to CT scanners and stationary X-ray machines, 3) improve image quality by adding infrared stereoscopic image capture, to ensure photographs add value even when obtained in low light settings, 4) enhancing the cameras with video and audio capabilities, which will improve patient identification, while simultaneously gathering rich clinical information, and 5) refine the triggering method for photograph acquisition. The long-term objectives are to increase the detection rate of wrong-patient errors by embedding an intrinsic, externally visible biometric identifier with medical imaging studies; and increase interpreting physician throughput by decreasing interpretation time.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.