ECG in Healthcare
by Akiro
Akiro low code platform enables rapid development and deployment of healthcare IoT analytics applications. Let's take the ECG use case. Note that one of the differentiation aspects is that Akiro platform offers a ready multi-tenant data environment and also a analytics /visualization wrt user role hierarchy and biz hierarchy (Org/Biz unit/Sub Biz Unit).
The electrocardiogram (ECG) has always been a popular measurement scheme to assess
and diagnose cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). While building an IoT analytics solution for
ECG devices, one has to keep in mind correlating data or data elements with a variety of
aspects (a) Symptoms - Chest Pain, Palpitation,Dizziness and Shortness of Breath (b) ECG
Test Profile - 1. types like resting, exercising and ambulatory 2. duration with various
frequencies from 5mins to continuous. (d) Diagnosis objectives like to detect arrhythmias,
faster heart rate, low heart rate and cardiomyopathy etc. (e) Sensor data ECG (f) PQS and
various time segments, heart rate etc.
The literature corresponding to ECG monitoring systems and schemes is expanding
exponentially. In such situations, one should understand the importance of having a fine
control of data in every step of the data flow, mainly data acquisition, preprocessing and
processing while the end step itself can be generating insights which includes both model
based and statistical based. Hence, building or choosing the right analytics capabilities
needs a sophisticated IoT data analytics platform that allows greater degree of data visibility, ready constructs to deal with monitoring and alerting in addition to generating insights.
Akiro low code IoT analytics platform allows to fully exploit the potential value of your data by freeing you to focus on business logic and applications to track and manage medicines.
Ingestion
Akiro acquisition and big data data storage modules ensure the ingestion of data in a reliable fashion and storing it in a secure and trustworthy environment.
ECG signal acquisition is a challenging task because of its sensitivity towards various quality dimensions including precision, accuracy, and timeliness. Inaccurate data collection may lead to a wrong diagnosis and accordingly affect clinical decisions. Unlike other domains where data collection frequencies may be in seconds to minutes, note that ECG signal is a continuous stream, requires very high data reliability and hence support of multiple protocols like MQTT or IP-based systems thereby improving interoperability.
Onboarding the data further needs a multi tenant system to support registration of ECG
Devices and its characteristics. Akiro's strong acquisition/ingestion engine which is time
tested and can handle millions of requests per second addresses these issues in a 100% no code fashion.
Preprocessing, Alerting and Monitoring
Akiro IoT platform enables the extraction of diagnostic markers like heart rate and
biochemical measurements from different sensors placed on the Right Arm, Left Arm, Right Leg, Left Leg and Chest in real time. Akiro provides a low code platform to compute sensor data streams in real-time with dataflows and services, while allowing filtered and transformed data to flow securely.
Akiro can generate SMS, Email, Visual and Sound alerts on dashboards in real time (a) to
physician and patient to inform about the health status (b) to the customer support team to inform about operational efficiency issues and anomalies, in real time based on both model and defined rules. Akiro’s UI based Rule engine allows with relatively no code new
anomalies detection logic and thresholds in a matter of minutes.
Apart from diagnosis, Akiro can be used to manage ECG devices auto discovery alerts,
usage and utilization alerts.
Insights
It's important to identify trends long before the competition, differentiate your brand, and maximize revenue, therefore, in addition to collecting ECG sensor data, Akiro IoT platform makes ECG analytics use cases powerful by capturing additional contextual information like patient information, physicians information, diagnosis information, device make, capabilities
and location information.
Akiro IoT platform can help generate research data to quantify the behavioural risk factors. All you need to do is add patient physical activity level, tobacco, alcohol and diet information when you configure the ECG device to collect ECG data. If you have a hospital chain spread across cities with millions of ECG devices, add location information, you can easily build
insights into the data when collected over days, weeks, months or years. With these 1. you can know which areas have more number of heart patients and how many cardiologists need to be deployed in which areas. 2. You can send the individual ECG data to multiple doctors to reach consensus on the diagnostic results. 3. This high value enriched data can be shared for research or business purposes. 4. You can carry out advanced research involving machine learning using TensorFlow.
Akiro IoT platform can also be used to implement business strategy with the help of how many times and duration of ECG device used, number of devices in use, demographic location of the devices. With this data, you can make a critical decision whether to plan to increase ECG devices in areas where it has more demand or send the patients to hospitals where ECG devices are available to improve business efficiency.
As demonstrated, Akiro low code understands the complexities of the time series and frequency nature of the ECG data, it offers both realtime, batch analytics and corresponding dashboards. As in an ECG use case, each stakeholder requires a different reporting context. customization of data reporting for each stakeholder, such as the doctor, the nurse, the caregiver, and the patient, is included. One of the key abilities wrt statistical analysis is to generate a variety of queries from data points across contextual info like patient, device make and ECG sensor data. You can solve both technical and business problems in no time.
Further, modern day analytics demand data export capabilities and also necessary integration to 3rd party visualization tools, animation storyboards and 3D cave systems as in the case of ECG. Effectively, Akiro low code brings to the table all the aspects of analytics discussed here.
