MERCURYTM,
C-DAC's Integrated Telemedicine Solution
Telemedicine is the use
of Tele-communication and Information technologies to provide
clinical care at a distance. Consider a typical Telemedicine
interaction. The Patient goes to a Doctor, who after examination
of the patient's file, feels the need for a second opinion.
The Doctor then consolidates the relevant clinical data
into the patient's Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
and then seeks an opinion of the Specialist using Tele-Consultation.
A connection to the Specialists Workstation is initiated from the Patient end
and the Patient's data is uploaded. The Specialist then examines
the data, makes a diagnosis, provides advice, and suggests
a course of action. The two Doctors get on to a video-conference
to jointly arrive at the diagnosis and the course of treatment.
This advice is then transmitted back to the presenting Doctor at Patient end
who takes appropriate action.
This essentially avoids
patient discomfort of having to travel to the Specialist's
office/ clinic without the Specialist having to visit the
patient; this is especially important if the patient is
in trauma. Thus right care can be provided at the right place
at the right time with minimal discomfort to all concerned.
This sort of interaction is becoming
quite common. C-DAC's Integrated Telemedicine Solution, MercuryTM,
provides an Integrated Solution to make such interactions
possible and more. MercuryTM can be used to provide Telemedicine
Consultation for various fields of medicine - Tele-Radiology,
Tele-Cardiology, Tele-Just-About-Anything.
On closer examination of the
interaction, one will find that there are two main aspects viz.
making & managing the EMR and the actual Tele-Consultation.
Let us see how MercuryTM facilitates these two aspects.
Usually the Patient Record
(PR) is available in the hardcopy form (papers, celluloid
films, ECG strips, etc.). MercuryTM allows the Doctor to quickly
put these together into the patients EMR and classify them.
Data of various types like celluloid films, hard copies,
can be scanned in; ECGs, video-clips of endoscopies, angiographies,
etc. can be made a part of the EMR (using direct interface
to the devices), as can be audio-clips of electronic stethoscopes,
dictations, etc. All such documents and images are stored
in an encrypted form.
Once the EMR is consolidated,
the Physician can quickly navigate through the EMR. MercuryTM provides means to view data in a classified form, with a
tab for every type of data present e.g. X-Ray, ECG, Reports,
Advice, etc. MercuryTM also provides a Catalog view that lists
the various documents, images, etc. in the EMR with a short
summary.
MercuryTM equips the physician
with a rich toolset to examine different data. It supports
tools to pan, zoom, rotate, mark Regions of Interest (ROI)
and annotate the data. Extensive Image Processing features
are also provided.
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