Multi Purpose Platform for Virtual Care System

我们正处于公共医疗保健革命的风口浪尖，数字医疗技术的重大创新推动了这场革命。一个显著增长的领域，称为虚拟护理或远程患者护理，有可能永远改变医疗保健行业。根据Deloitte（2020年虚拟健康的未来），50%的医疗保健高管预测，在未来20年内，超过四分之一的门诊护理，预防护理和长期护理将转向虚拟交付。主要目标是大大减少对传统保健机构（医院、疗养院、长期保健中心）的依赖。特别是在流行病期间，这些设施受到极大的压力和迅速上升的成本。另一个挑战是患有慢性病的老年人和残疾人人数大幅增加，部分原因是社会老龄化。应对这一挑战需要对现有的医疗基础设施进行全面改造，使其更加灵活，成本更低，更容易被大众所接受。由于在通信系统、人工智能、云计算和医疗物联网（IoMT）领域取得的重大进展，现在有可能设计出低成本、可靠的虚拟医疗平台，使这一不断增长的人群受益，并减轻当前医疗系统的压力。 拟议的计划旨在通过设计多用途虚拟护理平台为这些努力做出贡献，该平台适用于各种远程用途，可以学习和生成通知，并且可以轻松改造以满足最终用户的需求。平台设计应考虑到不同护理点之间的无缝互操作性。目标是：1）开发一个综合框架，用于从患者端收集的关键信号的多模态信息融合，2）开发一套预测分析引擎，用于预诊断和发现潜在疾病，3）围绕开放的面向服务的架构构建多功能原型，以测试平台的可扩展性，准确性，隐私性和互操作性。 这项研究将推动新型虚拟医疗技术的发展，为过度紧张的医疗保健行业提供具有成本效益的解决方案。设计这样一个平台将对社会产生巨大的好处，因为它将使提供足够的护理服务，而不会对已经紧张的医疗保健系统造成过度的压力。该计划提供了一个绝佳的机会，帮助塑造加拿大医疗保健行业，并扩大人工智能，通信，安全和移动的计算等领域的现有优势。它有可能使加拿大处于这一领域技术进步的最前沿，同时有助于培训高素质的人员，他们将领导这一关键部门的未来进步。

We are on the cusp of a public healthcare revolution, fueled by major innovations in digital health technologies. One area of significant growth, called virtual care, or remote patient care, has the potential of forever transforming the healthcare industry. According to Deloitte (The Future of Virtual Health, 2020), 50% of healthcare executives predict that more than a quarter of all outpatient care, preventive care and long term care would move to virtual delivery in the next two decades. The main goal is to drastically minimize reliance on traditional healthcare institutions (hospitals, nursing homes, long-term health centres). Especially during pandemics, these facilities have been subjected to extreme strain and fast-rising costs. Another challenge is the significant increase in the number of elderly and disabled patients with chronic ailments, partly attributable to an aging society. Meeting this challenge requires a complete revamping of the existing healthcare infrastructure to make it more agile, less costly and easily accessible by the masses. Thanks to significant advances made in the fields of communication systems, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), it is now possible to design low-cost, reliable virtual care platforms that could benefit this ever-increasing segment of the population and relieve much of the strain on current healthcare system. The proposed program is aimed at contributing to these efforts through the design of multi- purpose virtual care platform that is adaptable for a variety of remote uses, can learn and produce notifications, and can be easily retrofitted to suite end-user needs. The platform design should allow for seamless interoperability among various points of care. The objectives are :1) developing a comprehensive framework for multi-modal information fusion of critical signals collected from the patient's end, 2)developing a suite of predictive analytics engines for pre-diagnosis and discovery of potential ailments, 3)building a multi-functional prototype around an open service-oriented architecture, to test the scalability, the accuracy, the privacy and the interoperability of the platform. This research will advance the development of novel virtual care technologies that will provide cost-effective solutions for an overstretched healthcare sector. Designing such a platform will be of tremendous benefit to society because it will enable the delivery of adequate care services without undue pressure on already-strained healthcare systems. The program presents an excellent opportunity to help shaping the Canadian healthcare industry and to expand on existing strengths in sectors such as AI, communications, security, and mobile computing. It has the potential of positioning Canada at the forefront of technology advances in this field while contributing to the training of highly qualified personnel who will lead future advances in this critical sector.