"They have already made history and they are now transforming not only markets, but our lives too. They started by killing the PC, and yet they promise to open unimaginable possibilities. Smart mobile devices linked to cloud, are creating new ways of registry, store, analyzed and access information.
One of the challenges that those applications can cope is to facilitate specialized medical care for vulnerable populations. In countries like Colombia, this is one of the big challenges in public health matters. Young Juan Sebastian Osorio at only 25 years old, has not only dared to deal with it, but has already developed several mobile applications and medical personalized devices that are vowing to resolve specific needs in a simple manner.
According to this biomedical engineer, the problems these devices aim to resolve are that, “clinical and physiological data generated by patients is most likely complex and contains a large amount of important and vital information difficult to identify”. Henceforth the need for systems that will empower to take the information in a faster and more accurate diagnosis. According to Osorio “the benefits of this are huge: from the wellbeing of a patient to the reduction of hospitalization time and lower morbidity, therefore, a reduction in the overall care costs”.
In the case of premature infants, costs are very high including “the number of complications related with weight loss and lack of maturity had increased” states Juan Sebastian Osorio. One of these complications is the sleep apnea in neonates; for which he has developed a monitor that allows detecting and classifying the types of apnea. The monitor is adapted to every patient and their specific conditions; the device called Diapneu gets a breath signal from muscles electrical signals of a baby’s diaphragm.
In addition to this device, the young man developed other devices such as a mobile application to prevent sudden death in infants, reducing the chances of death. The application calculates the risk level of each patient from clinical and physiological information. These applications are being used in several countries thanks to Sana Mobile platform, whose goal is to bring the development of medical devices to low-income populations, thanks to volunteers like Osorio, project director for this organization in Colombia.
