A mobile phone based intelligent scoring approach for assessment of critical illness

Medical practitioners (often nurses) collect various physiological signals, as well as subjective parameters. Physiological signals may include ECG, EEG, SpO2, temperature, continuous blood pressure etc. On the contrary, subjective parameters may include level of pain, level of alertness, awareness, behavioral responses etc. After successful accumulation of these data, a scoring system is utilized for early detection of critical illnesses. In many cases, the existing mechanism of scoring is performed manually, where the medical practitioner ticks on to a scoring board. In some cases the, the information from scoring board is relocated to a PC, where the software performs the scoring calculation. This paper demonstrates a new approach of using mobile phones to calculate the scoring. In the proposed system, the medical practitioner inputs the parameters directly on to their mobile phone while collecting the parameters from the patient. The score is automatically calculated by miniature java based software running inside the mobile phone. Based on the score, level of urgency is ascertained by the intelligent program. At the end, specialists are contacted automatically by messaging services. Moreover, the results of the scoring are transmitted to the hospital server. The proposed mobile phone based intelligent scoring system is integrated with SMS, MMS and HTTP capabilities. With the proposed mobile phone based scoring mechanism in place, volunteers without medical knowledge will be capable of patient monitoring. During any catastrophic event, required number of medical professionals is often absent. Therefore, assistance from civilians with mobile phone based medical intelligence can save precious life.