CIMIT blog

Aingeal: Low-Cost, Small, Wearable, Wireless Vital Signs Monitor

Supported by a CIMIT Innovation Grant within its Clinical Systems Innovation (CSI) Program, Aingeal is a low-cost, small, wearable, wireless device that monitors vital signs of patients, with an emphasis on respiratory rate, to reduce false alarms, allow for more virtual dissemination of alarms and simplify clinical workflow. CIMIT envisions this user driven innovative system to be in clinical use within 2 years (approximately 2014).

Learn about the CIMIT Clinical Systems Innovation (CSI) Program at http://www.cimit.org/programs-clinicalsystems.html.

Online Submission Process Open for 2012 Prize for Primary Healthcare

Prize for Primary Healthcare Contact: cimitprize@partners.org

About the Prize

The Prize for Primary Healthcare is an annual national competition encouraging engineering students to develop creative technological innovations with great potential to catalyze and support improved delivery of care at the frontlines of medicine. It is open to graduate and undergraduate students enrolled in accredited engineering programs.

Technologies of particular interest are ones that could improve access to medical care, leverage the skill of caregivers, automate routine tasks, increase workflow efficiency, support patients managing chronic disease, increase compliance with care protocols, reduce medical error, or augment the physician-patient relationship.

Prize Awards

• First Prize: $150,000
• Second Prize: $100,000
• Third Prize: $50,000
• Ten Finalists: $10,000 each

Timeline for Award Process

• January 2, 2011: Submission process opens
• January 16, 2012: Pre-proposals due
• February 15, 2012: Ten finalists selected & $10,000 distributed to each
• June 3, 2012: Full proposals due from 10 finalists
• July 2, 2012: Top three winners announced & major awards distributed

RFA Supporting Documents and Instructions

• Instructions for Online Submission of Letter of Intent
• Request for Applications (RFA) Letter of Intent Guidelines
• Student Prize Coversheet
• Full Proposal Evaluation Criteria
• Full Proposal Guidelines
• Frequently Asked Questions

This Prize for Primary Healthcare competition is sponsored by the Gelfand Family Charitable Trust. CIMIT is a non-profit consortium of Boston teaching hospitals and engineering schools.

Ambulatory Practice of the Future

With CIMIT support, the “Of-the-Futures” learning-laboratory model has spread to other settings across the continuum of care. Opening its doors in July 2010, the MGH Ambulatory Practice of the Future (APF) was created with the idea of being an innovation learning lab for the MGH primary care community while simultaneously functioning as a primary care clinic for employees. The final product is an IT-rich ambulatory practice environment, which includes remote conferencing and consulting; on-site or remote scheduling and check in; and virtual visits, including remote monitoring and automatic recording of vital signs to electronic medical records.

More Physicians Embrace Web-Based Health Solutions

CNBC.com (November 22, 2011) — The house call is back...with a high-tech spin.

In a bid to accommodate the aging population and the increasingly hectic lifestyles of their patients, physicians are embracing a broad spectrum of Web-based software solutions that are bringing healthcare services into the home.

From real time videoconferencing to secure online chats, telehealth is not only changing the way care gets delivered, but helping to improve medical outcomes by making care more accessible to patients who lack easy access, according to Ronald Dixon, a practicing general internist and director of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, CIMIT, in Boston.

Dixon says all ten doctors in his practice are currently testing the software as part of the Virtual Practice Pilot program at Massachusetts General Hospital, which is studying the effectiveness of live office visits versus videoconferencing patient encounters.

Read full story at CNBC.com >>

2nd Annual AMA-IEEE Medical Technology Conference on October 16-18, 2011

The American Medical Association (AMA) and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMB) Society are pleased to announce the Second AMA-IEEE Medical Technology Conference in Boston, MA, on October 16-18, 2011 at the Park Plaza Hotel and Towers. The meeting will take place just before the Connected Health Symposium.

The 2011 conference will be devoted to Healthcare IT, a discipline at the intersection of information and computer science, engineering, and healthcare. The conference will examine resources, devices and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, display, and use of information in health and biomedicine including healthcare informatics applications such as clinical decision support.

The conference will be inaugurated by a keynote lecture at an evening reception on Sunday, October 16. The following two days will feature plenary and poster presentations focusing on the challenges  and solutions involving healthcare informatics and quality patient care. Breakout Sessions will be highly interactive and solutions-orientated. This is an unparalleled opportunity to share your knowledge with a respected audience of engineers, physicians, and other healthcare professionals as well as network with your peers in the industry. The themes are:

• Healthcare Reform and Health IT Adoption
• Workflow (administrative & clinical) and Health IT
• Clinical Decision Support and Individualized Medicine
• Improving the Outcomes and Quality

The Keynote and Plenary Speakers will set the tone for a very dynamic conference.