A mobile ultrasound project spearheaded by Qualcomm in Morocco has cut ultrasound costs, reduced the transmission of data from days to seconds and slashed patient waiting times from weeks to less than a day.
The results of the year-long "Mobile Ultrasound Patrol Project" are contained in a recent 40-page report issued by Qualcomm Wireless, and point to the advantages of mHealth for high-risk maternal populations throughout the world, say the project's organizers.
“The results created in this collaboration are beyond what we could have dreamed," Asa Nordgren, CEO of Trice Imaging, a partner in the project, said in a prepared statement. "This project proves that new technology can provide high quality, affordable and timely healthcare services under really tough circumstances and to people who would not normally have access to quality care.”
Through its Wireless Reach initiative, San Diego-based Qualcomm partnered with Trice, a mobile medical imaging provider, to run the 3G Mobile Ultrasound Patrol project in three rural Moroccan villages. Ultrasound images were captured on FujiFilm SonoSite's M-turbo portable ultrasound system and transmitted to Sony Xperia smartphones fitted with the Trice Imaging DICOM encryption application, then shuttled up to Qualcomm's cloud-based image management platform for review by specialists in Casablanca and Fez, Morocco, and Paris.
In all, officials said, 575 exams were conducted, with 94 revealing potential at-risk pregnancies and 158 patients flagged for a second opinion.
Qualcomm officials said the healthcare providers in Morocco were able to:
- Shorten the time for diagnostic reviews or second opinions from two weeks to less than a day;
- Reduce ultrasound costs from $80 to $2 per patient;
- Reduce the delivery of data from site to specialist from four days to two seconds;
- Shorten the wait time for a medical opinion from two weeks to less than a day;
- Improve the ability of local healthcare providers to deliver ultrasound images sufficient for diagnostic purposes from 20 percent to 92 percent; and
- Increase the number of patients seeking care at so-called "health houses," as well as boosting the number of deliveries in those facilities and reducing the number of potentially-more-problematic at-home births.
According to officials, some 800 women die each day around the world from preventable causes linked to pregnancy and childbirth. Also, some 3 million newborn babies die each year across the globe, while another 2.6 million are stillborn.
In their report, Nordgren and Shawn Covell, Qualcomm's vice president of governmental affairs, highlight four elements driving disruption in ultrasound medicine. The latest ultrasound devices coming onto the market are smaller and able to connect wirelessly to the Internet via Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or cellular technologies, they point out. In addition, mobile networks are starting to overtake fixed networks in terms of speed, capacity and range, and today's technology is also better adept at storing and encrypting data and authenticating users. Finally, led by agencies such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization, there's an increased focus on women's health issues around the globe.
"The Mobile Ultrasound Patrol Project showed that using wireless technology and a cloud-based system would make a significant difference in medical care in a region like rural Morocco," the two wrote in an executive summary. "These technologies not only help the image-capturing physician or midwife to quickly make appropriate decisions; they efficiently connect health houses to second opinion expertise at regional and university hospitals, all of which saves the patient time."
Nordgren and Covell also noted that while this project was a success, they could see a whole lot more being done with the technology.
"We think the next step is a project focusing on proving the clinical outcome and tying the use of technology to the actual desired results, saving lives and ultimately impacting the millennium goals to contribute to lowering the global maternal death rate," they wrote. "We think that both the technology and the workflow model should be put to a real test, implementing the next project in the top five regions on UNFPA’s list of countries that have the highest maternal death rates. Other areas of interest to consider would be breast cancer, Tuberculosis and elderly care."
"If we could do this, what might be possible if the technology where available via global health organizations that have the network, the caregivers and local representation globally?" they added. "Or what could be possible if the technology was available via the public healthcare systems globally? How many lives could be saved?"
