mHealth Demo Application Architecture

Today, in most hospitals, patient details, vital signs, lab results, and prescriptions are written on paper and clipped to the patient's bed. This method may lead to mistakes as well as loss of data. What if doctors could receive all of the data related to their patients on a mobile device? With this method, doctors would be able to walk around the hospital and access each patient's data digitally and directly. The digital hospital would not need to use paper, as all of the information would be stored electronically and delivered to different devices such as PCs and mobile devices using pull and push methods. The push method delivers data and updates periodically. The pull method delivers data upon the doctor's request. This would allow doctors to monitor the status of the patient remotely-from any location and at any time. Moreover, instructions will be entered using mobile devices or PCs. The PocketPowerChart is an application and service that offers physicians the ability to see updated records for their patients-anytime, anywhere on their personal mobile devices. The application provides security, maintains privacy of patient data, and gives physicians anywhere availability of their patient data. This application for mobile health is a First of A Kind (FOAK) project being developed at the IBM Haifa Labs, and is based on a model used by the Cerner Corporation. The project is currently being run as a pilot for five physicians in an Austrian hospital. The physicians have local access to patients' lab results, vital signs, mediations, demographic information, and can receive updated data anytime. The main components of the J2ME PocketPowerChart application are: Web server and application server. These servers are located remotely and provide access to all Electronic Patient Records (EPR). Mobile devices, such as PalmOS-based phones and J2ME enabled phones. J2ME PocketPowerChart application. This application executes on J2ME enabled devices. Application-independent utilities for mobile devices that are used for data caching and access to patient records. Proxy server. This server acts an intermediary between the application server and the clients, and the mobile applications that are operated on the mobile devices. The proxy server is responsible for data caching, validation, encryption, and filtering. It is also responsible for interaction recording and monitoring. The J2ME PocketPowerChart application architecture is described below: J2ME PocketPowerChart application architecture