Mei-Ju Su

Application of Tele-Ultrasound in Emergency Medical Services

In emergency medical services, portable ultrasound scanners have the potential to become new-age stethoscopes for emergency physicians. For trauma cases in particular, portable ultrasound scanners can scan the chest and abdomen of emergency patients both rapidly and conveniently. This study describes the development of tele-ultrasound for pre-diagnosis in a medical emergency setting as a part of the updated Mobile Hospital Emergency Medical System (MHEMS). An emergency medical technician can provide an emergency physician with a patients ultrasound images and medical information during the patients pre-hospitalization and transportation period using a combination of the MHEMS, the portable ultrasound scanner, and the onboard 3G communication capabilities. The MHEMS includes a Dispatch and Mission Control Center that facilitates the communication between the Emergency Department of a specified hospital, the systems aboard the ambulance. Early receipt of information relevant to the patient will enhance pre-diagnosis options for on-duty emergency physicians and allow for a hospitals emergency department to promptly prepare necessary surgical instruments or beds. Furthermore, emergency medical technicians can also obtain instructions from on-duty physicians to enhance damage and disaster control ability in critical moments.

A Study of Ubiquitous Monitor with RFID in an Elderly Nursing Home

The percentage of the elderly population grew rapidly in recent years, so the tremendous life and health care needs became an issue of focus in an aging society. The Elderly Nursing Home plays an important role and intends to provide a comfortable environment and living space and serve as safe and healthy place for the elderly. However, the frailty and fragility of the elderly in both physiologically and psychologically make it an uneasy task. To enhance the service and care quality of an Elderly Nursing Home, a ubiquitous monitor system integrated with biosensors and radio frequency identification (RFID) technology was implemented as a prototyping system. The system was expected to improve the activity of daily living (ADL) of the residents, to detect the emergencies or accidents such as stroke, falling down, fainting, and heart attack, in order to enhance the quality of care and promote efficiency at the same time.

Temporal and Spatial Denoising of Depth Maps

This work presents a procedure for refining depth maps acquired using RGB-D (depth) cameras. With numerous new structured-light RGB-D cameras, acquiring high-resolution depth maps has become easy. However, there are problems such as undesired occlusion, inaccurate depth values, and temporal variation of pixel values when using these cameras. In this paper, a proposed method based on an exemplar-based inpainting method is proposed to remove artefacts in depth maps obtained using RGB-D cameras. Exemplar-based inpainting has been used to repair an object-removed image. The concept underlying this inpainting method is similar to that underlying the procedure for padding the occlusions in the depth data obtained using RGB-D cameras. Therefore, our proposed method enhances and modifies the inpainting method for application in and the refinement of RGB-D depth data image quality. For evaluating the experimental results of the proposed method, our proposed method was tested on the Tsukuba Stereo Dataset, which contains a 3D video with the ground truths of depth maps, occlusion maps, RGB images, the peak signal-to-noise ratio, and the computational time as the evaluation metrics. Moreover, a set of self-recorded RGB-D depth maps and their refined versions are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

A cloud based Bluetooth Low Energy tracking system for dementia patients

Location based services of trackers can keep dementia patients safe, but traditional GPS tracker or smartphone based solution device need to be removed for recharging or when taking bath. A water-proof Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tag with a CR2302 battery can be used over a year so that it can be worn all the time. By combining BLE technology, smartphones and cloud services provided by Google, we can build a practical location and tracking system with minimal cost.

Augmented reality serious game framework for rehabilitation with personal health records

Users interact with most electronic entertainment games via some specific electronic sensors, which are not part of the existing equipment in most household. As well, some electronic entertainment games claim to have medical rehabilitative effects. This research designs a series of web-based serious games (SGs) for rehabilitation utilization with a proposed framework that lets family users easily connect through the Internet without the need for special sensors. This system includes diverse SGs for different rehabilitation levels. Users can operate these SGs via mouse or hand movements. Therefore, it is not necessary for patients to buy or rent any extra rehabilitation equipment; all that is required is a personal computer at home. Some of these SGs are adapted to augmented reality technology. This system also connects directly with personal health records in order to log every rehabilitation activity. In addition, social networks, such as Facebook, can be used for connecting rehabilitation patients at home with each other. By simplifying access, this rehabilitation SG system increases the frequency of rehabilitative activity of patients at home.

Pilot Study on a Community-Based Ubiquitous Healthcare System for Current and Retired University Employees

Entering the 21st century, the aging process and increasing chronic diseases in Taiwan society have become more prevalent. To deal with the problem, we develop a ubiquitous healthcare (u-Health) system platform that integrates wireless telecommunication, sensor network, and information technology to take care of patients having chronic diseases. The u-Health system provides not only telecare at home setting, but also a health community network which can further integrate medical care and life care and emphasize on patent humanity and dignity. For this purpose, a holistic u-Health system focusing on the physiological, psychosocial, arts, recreational, and even spiritual aspects of patients was implemented for people living in the community. In this study, we applied our community based u-Health system to the current and retired employees of National Taiwan University (NTU) who had at least one of the following chronic diseases: hypertension, diabetes mellitus and obesity, and required long term follow up and treatment. A community medical group (CMG) which is formed with family doctors from the Family Medicine Department of NTU Hospital, the Yung-Ho Branch of Cardinal Tien Hospital, NTU Health Center, and several other local clinics in Taipei City was in charge of the medical care along with a dedicated case managing nurse for the medical care at outpatient clinics, home telecare and 24-hour health consultation. Using this integrated community-based system is expected to provide a comprehensive and ubiquitous healthcare and eventually improve the quality of care by increasing compliance and reducing the complications of chronic diseases.

Application of wireless network in a medical emergency service network

Life is priceless, so pre-hospital evaluation and management is important in emergency medical service. To enhance the quality of emergency medical service, the mobile hospital emergency medical system (MHMES) is designed to provide for e-prepared services. This system could improve the communication among the ambulance, the dispatch and mission control center and the emergency department of the hospital via a wireless network, and provide comprehensive service during pre-hospital resuscitation and transportation of the patients. The MHMES consists of three sub-systems located in three sites respectively, dispatch and mission control center, emergency department of hospital and ambulance. It includes electrical map to track the ambulances and transfer patients situation and histories with the hospital to follow the symptom. Therefore, this system would be able to reduce the mortality during transportation and enhance the safety and quality of emergency medical service. It structures an emergency informatics system of National Taiwan University Hospital to provide a application of wireless network in a medical emergency service network.

Real-time mobile-to-mobile stethoscope for distant healthcare

This study presented to insert a small-scaled microphone of the ear-set of a smart mobile (Amazing A6, Taiwan MobileTM) into an eartip of the stethoscope, the sound can be transmitted by the mobile when it dialed to another phone or mobile. In this study, we employed another smart phone (Galaxy R GT19103, SamsungTM) to be the receiver. The results were showed by spectrogram which demonstrated the components of frequencies of the sounds. Finally, we proposed to improve the study by database.

Socio-health with personal mental health records: Suicidal-tendency observation system on Facebook for Taiwanese adolescents and young adults

Beginning in 2009 the second-leading cause of death for Taiwanese aged 15 to 24 has been suicide, accounting for 12.4% of deaths that year in this group and rising in the years since. The Taiwan Suicide Prevention Center (TSPC) provides a modest mental survey (MMS), also called the “feeling thermometer”, for evaluating individual psychological condition. The MMS has determined suicidal tendency with at least 85% precision. It has been observed that the most effective method for getting youth to take the MMS is to include it casually in various popular activities. In collaboration with the TSPC, the research team developed a suicidal-tendency observation system on some popular social web sites such as Facebook. Taiwans youth can simply participate in the MMS, and the results, with required personal information, are stored in the personal mental health records in the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) standard international format. The service went online at the end of 2010. The TSPC can initiate contact with members of the high-risk group immediately via the systems alerts. In addition, youth can be made self-aware through the MMS and so visit mental health physicians to obtain effective guidance.

Integrated telehome care with community-based health information system

Even as the 21st Century dawns, Taiwan has already become an aging society. As of 2007, more than 10% of the population is composed of elderly people over 65 years of age. Due to a decrease in total fertility rate to 1.1 in 2008, the proportion of elderly people in the general population will increase more rapidly in the next two decades. The increasingly elderly population, coupled with a corresponding shortage of productive manpower, means that many elderly people are living alone or without a designated caregiver during the day. In this study, a health management center with a community-based health information system platform was integrated with a community hospital and primary care family doctors to provide telehome care for elderly people with chronic diseases or disabilities.