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Ankur Agarwal, Ph.D., PI of the project.
or a heart condition. Once
a high-risk patient has been
identified Soren Technology’s
existing, patented software
technology will help to provide
coordinated care for the patient
in order to avoid readmission.
Current healthcare devices are
not set up to share data. The
partnership will explore a new
protocol compatible with IEEE
11073 Personal Health Data
Standards to allow devices to
communicate and transfer
information through the
use of smart phones.
The team will also enhance Soren Technology’s multimedia
algorithm to optimize data streams for telemedicine purposes,
utilizing voice, video and physiological data. Telemedicine services
include specialist referrals which involves a patient seeing a
specialist over a live, remote consultation or a physician’s office
sending diagnostic images and/or video along with a patient’s data
to a specialist for diagnosis; patient consultations; remote patient
monitoring which can include audio, live or still images; and access
to medical and consumer health information using a direct link to a
physician’s office or over the Web.
1 6
C E NT E R S UCC E S S STOR I E S
FAU DEVELOPING INNOVATIVE
TECHNOLOGIES TO ADDRESS
CHALLENGES OF TELEMEDICINE
AND HOME-HEALTHCARE
Ankur Agarwal, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science
at FAU received a one-year NSF Collaborative Research: Data
Correlation and Fusion for Medical Monitoring grant of $200,000
through the NSF I/UCRC, CAKE in conjunction with Florida
International University (FIU) and a matching grant from Soren
Technology of an additional $200,000 to address the challenges
of telemedicine and home healthcare. This research is in response
to the rising healthcare costs in the United States associated with
hospitalization. “We are very pleased to be a part of this unique
interdisciplinary project linking the field of computer science
with the field of medicine,” said Borko Furht, Ph.D., professor and
director of the I/UCRC, CAKE FAU site. “This research will help
improve patient healthcare options and provide innovative tools
to help physicians manage patient care.”The project will cover
three main areas of research -- testing Soren Technology’s decision
support system to avoid readmission, a protocol for interoperability
of healthcare devices and a multimedia algorithm to optimize data
streams for telemedicine.
The decision support system work will include the testing of a
patient prognosis system to assess a patient’s readmission risk
based on specific serious health conditions such as pneumonia