In the medical industry there is often the need to monitor the progress of patients or
participants in clinical trials. Traditionally this has been very hit and miss and in
some cases quite invasory. The information collected was often of low quality and
sometimes arrived too late to be of any use.
Our idea was to find a way of collecting a variety of Bio-Markers (temperature, pulse,
heart rate etc.) together with user appended information then collect, transmit, analyse
and report all in real time.
This is actually not a new idea and has been marketed by a variety of companies for
some time however the use has primarily been for the family practitioner rather than the
pharmaceutical industry.
The solution we are adopting is to create a number of Bio-Sensors which will transmit
collected data via Bluetooth connections to a PDA or SmartPhone running Dyalog’s PocketAPL.
Once collected the information can be displayed as appropriate and the patient can annotate
if they so wish. All of the collected data is then transmitted conventionally to a web
server where the researcher can analyse then report as needed.
The overall solution uses many different skills and technologies and has been an interesting
project to work on. It also allows us to easily interface the collected data with our existing
analysis and presentation tools – also written in APL of course.