3D avatar improves patient care

Google Earth for the human body

Hannover, Germany, Rüschlikon, Switzerland, 3 March 2008 — Researchers at IBM's (NYSE: IBM) Zurich Research Laboratory in Switzerland have developed the first prototype of a new kind of visualization software for electronic patient information. The ASME (Anatomic Symbolic Mapper Engine) system allows the medical data of a patient to be recorded and retrieved quickly and easily through a virtual map of the human body (avatar), resulting in significantly improved patient care. At the CeBIT 2008 tradefair, IBM will demonstrate for the first time the integration of this software with the Lotus Notes 8 Client, thus presenting the added collaboration features.

Flood of data in healthcare
In the course of one's lifetime, innumerable medical data concerning one's health status is collected in various forms throughout the health system. Keeping track of records is always a difficult and time-consuming task for doctors, nurses and health insurance companies — let alone for patients themselves. This leads to inefficiency, higher costs and a greater risk of receiving the wrong treatment.

ASME – Google Earth for the human body
Working closely with IBM Denmark and customers, researchers at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory have developed a new visualization software that can help solve these problems. Called ASME, this visualization software can organize patient information in a completely new way by linking a patient's electronic health data to a 3D anatomical model of the human body. Using the 3D representation, doctors can consult an overview of patient data quickly and easily as well as accurately identify and locate previous treatments and treated areas of the body, and this in a way they are used to: by examining the human body. For example, by clicking on a specific part of the body, all pertinent information can be accessed. In the past, doctors may have had to sift through piles of notes, laboratory reports and test results. Now they can obtain all information pertaining to the health status of a patient by means of the 3D avatar. If a patient is experiencing back pain, for example, the doctor could access all the information about the spine of the patient by clicking on the spine of the ASME 3D avatar. This data includes all text entries, laboratory results, X-ray and tomography images, prescriptions and therapy reports. If the doctor wants to examine a region more closely, he or she can zoom in on that region. Doctors can also choose between a total or a specific view, such as the cardiovascular or the muscular system. ASME includes the Lotus Notes 8 Client and thus offers many collaboration features. Doctors can, for example, check in real time the availability of colleagues directly from the application, invite them to a chat session or launch a joint action for further treatment.

Technological challenges
To solve the technological challenges involved, IBM scientists have developed software capable of learning and of implementing sophisticated analytic methods. For the advanced 3D model, researchers had to link electronic patient data precisely to the digital representation. For this purpose, the ASME software refers to the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), which organizes no fewer than 300,000 medical terms, in order to correlate unstructured text documents with the appropriate graphic. One of the trickiest and at the same time most exciting tasks was defining the context search. If one zooms in on a specific part of the body, the system uses this information to adapt the algorithm of the information search. Therefore, if one searches for "nail" and moves the cursor to the bones of the hand, information on fingernails and not toenails is displayed.

ASME – one step on the path toward eHealth
The software prototype from IBM is an important step on the way toward eHealth. IBM researchers have developed ASME as a component of a comprehensive eHealth platform, the IBM Medical Information Hub. It offers hospitals, doctors and other healthcare providers the capability to easily and securely collect and share patient data in real-time and in compliance with data-protection requirements. After a hospital stay, for example, information can be collected using the Medical Information Hub and retrieved at the next visit to the doctor using ASME, provided the patient gives his or her consent. Initially, the system may only be accessed by physicians, whereas the information remains the property of the patient.

ASME – the vision of researchers
IBM researchers are currently working intensively on optimizing ASME's interactivity and ease of navigation. In the future, ASME could become even more flexible by integrating such features as speech technology or a realistic visual representation of the 3D avatar. The vision is to develop a system without a keyboard but rather with multitouch screens and integrated speech technology. In addition to user-friendly and efficient technologies such as ASME, an acceptance of electronic media by doctors is also very important before eHealth can become reality. Other vital issues include the willingness to cooperate and to develop standards as well as to ensure data protection.