MEDICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM
This invention concerns a medical information system for enabling a
practitioner to access medical data about a patient during an emergency affecting
that patient.
The invention is particularly intended to help paramedical personnel such as
ambulance crews to administer appropriate on-the-spot treatment to persons
diagnosed with some medical condition who are affected by an emergency such as
collapsing in a public place. However it is to be understood that the invention is
not limited to this specific use and it may for instance be used by physicians
wanting immediate reminders of a patient's medical history, by nurses or junior
doctors in hospitals, by a wide variety of therapists or by veterinary surgeons or
other personnel caring for animals. The terms "medical", "practitioner" and
"patient" as used herein are to be construed accordingly.
Traditionally, medical information systems were based on written records.
Over the past few decades such systems have been computerised. However they
have remained consolidated stores of information, essentially immobile and
therefore not readily accessible except within a hospital or surgery. But of course
very many people have medical conditions which, albeit serious, do not keep them
in hospital or even at home, and to help these people lead an active life they often
carry some kind of device to indicate their condition. This device may be a card
with printed information or, say, a bracelet or necldace bearing some symbol.
Devices of this kind have brought substantial benefits to large numbers of
people, but they are not without problems. Printed cards can provide all the
essential information needed by a practitioner; but they are obtrusive if worn on
the body, are easily mislaid if carried in clothing or a bag, and may be difficult to
keep clean and legible. Symbolic devices may be unobtrusive, they may even be
decorative; but they require practitioners to recognise them, to distinguish them
and to recall appropriate treatment.
It is an object of the present invention to provide medical information in a
form which is easily carried by a patient and easily accessed by a practitioner.
According to the invention there is provided a medical information system
for enabling a practitioner to access medical data about a patient during an
emergency affecting that patient, which system comprises a register for said data, a
reader for reading and displaying the data in the register and connection means for
connecting the reader to the register so that said data is read and displayed,
wherein the connection means is configured and arranged to be carried by said
patient.
The connection means may be held in a container arranged to be worn by
said patient at all times. The connection means may be releasable from said
container to connect the reader to the store, and said container may embody a
mark signifying that it holds said connection means..
The reader may be portable as well as the connection means.
In a first embodiment of the invention, the connection means may comprise
a subscriber identity module (SIM) card, and the reader may comprise a mobile
telephone. The mobile telephone may be arranged to be carried by said patient,
and it may include an alarm operable by said patient to communicate the
emergency. Alternatively and preferably the mobile telephone may be arranged to
be carried by said practitioner and have a screen to display data, in which case the
patient's SIM card may be insertable into the practitioner's mobile telephone to
cause the data on the SIM card to be displayed. The system may include
programming means, which may be conveniently located at a mobile telephone
depot, operable to enter said medical data onto the SIM card.
In another embodiment of the invention, the connection means may
comprise a numeric string having a first part representing a telephone number of
the data store and a second part identifying data in that store specific to the
patient. With this embodiment the reader preferably comprises a mobile telephone
including a keypad for entering said numeric string. There may be control
apparatus associated with the data store and operative, when said numeric string is
entered, automatically to send a signal to the mobile telephone requesting the call
number of that mobile telephone to be entered; and then, when said call number is
entered, the control apparatus is preferably operative automatically to transmit to
the mobile telephone the data specific to the patient. Alternatively there may be
control apparatus associated with the data store and operative, when said numeric
string is entered, automatically to identify the call number of the mobile telephone
and to transmit thereto the data specific to the patient. The control apparatus may
include means responsive to the call number of the mobile telephone to transmit
the data in a language appropriate to the territory of the mobile telephone.
Other features of the invention will be apparent from the following
description, which is made by way of example only with reference to the
accompanying schematic drawings in which -
Figure 1 depicts an emergency in which a man has collapsed;
Figure 2 shows a device worn by the collapsed man to indicate that he
suffers from some medical condition;
Figure 3 indicates how information about the collapsed man's medical
condition can be accessed;
Figure 4 illustrates programming of a first embodiment of a medical
information system according to the invention; and
Figure 5 illustrates the use of a second embodiment of a medical
information system according to the invention.
Referring first to Figure 1, this shows a man indicated at 10 who has
collapsed in the street. An ambulance, not shown, has been summoned and now a
paramedical practitioner indicated at 12 and his assistant indicated at 14 are
attending the man 10. The man 10 suffers from diabetes and he has collapsed from
acute hypoglycaemia, but this is not immediately known to either the practitioner
12 or his assistant 14. They are therefore carrying out basic medical checks before
attempting to move the man 10.
In performing these checks, the practitioner 12 very rapidly discovers that
the man 10 is wearing a device 20 attached to a chain 22 around his neck, as shown
in Figure 2. The device 20 is in the form of a container bearing a mark 20a which
the practitioner recognises as indicating that the man 10 suffers from some medical
condition and that the device 20 contains connection means giving access to a
store of essential information about this condition. (It may be noted here that the
mark 20a is a general-purpose indicator and does not itself identify the medical
condition of the man 10. Thus people with all sorts of different conditions can
wear a device 20 bearing the same mark 20a, which is thereby universally
recognisable. It should be understood that the mark 20a shown in the drawings is
purely illustrative, and any appropriate mark may be used in connection with the
invention).
Referring now to Figure 3, the device 20 can be opened to release the
connection means it contains, which is a SIM card 30 of the kind commonly used
with mobile telephones but including (as well as or instead of the usual personal
information) a data register holding the information about the medical condition of
the man 10. As indicated by arrow 32, the SIM card 30 is inserted into a mobile
telephone 34 carried by the paramedical practitioner 12 (see also Figure 1). When
this is done the medical data a held in the register of the SIM card 30 is displayed
on the screen 34a of the mobile telephone 34, and the practitioner 12 can
immediately determine appropriate treatment for the man 10.
The SIM card 30 can be loaded with medical information in a mobile
telephone depot as will now be described with reference to Figure 4. A person
wishing to make use of the medical information system takes to the depot a record
(eg a diskette or compact disc, not shown) of his medical condition. At the depot a
computer 40 is programmed to add medical data to a SIM card and is connected to
an encoding device 42 into which a SIM card is inserted. The record is loaded into
the computer 40 in the usual way, and the computer 40 reads the information and
causes the encoding device 42 to create a personalised SIM card bearing in which a
data register holds the person's individual information. This SIM card can then be
inserted in any mobile telephone to cause the person's medical information to be
displayed. Yet confidentiality can be preserved by arranging the computer 40 not
to display this information.
Various modifications may be made to the medical information system
described herein without departing from the present invention. For instance, the
medical information may be held in a data register provided otherwise than on a
SIM card may be used, for instance in a device readable by way of a USB port of a
computer or some other reader, although a SIM card has particular advantages in
terms of its widespread use and low cost. Those skilled in the art will appreciate
that practitioners may be issued with specially designed readers (for SIM cards or
other registers), but mobile telephones are already very widely used.
A SIM card used in the invention it may be partitioned into a main part
concerned with telecommunications and a module containing the user's medical
data; and with this arrangement the SIM card may be used in the person's own
mobile telephone, which may include an alarm button to signal an emergency, to
determine the location of the person and/or to transmit medical data from a
central record. Although the SIM card 30 is described as being releasably held in a
container 20, it may otherwise be embedded in a sheath of synthetic plastics
material allowing it to be connected to a mobile telephone. The data register may
be created loaded with medical information at the user's treatment centre rather
than at a mobile telephone depot.
The invention may exploit the ubiquity of mobile telephones in another way,
illustrated in Figure 5. Rather than the SIM card being used as a storage medium
for personal medical information, in the embodiment of Figure 5 a mobile
telephone 50 is used to call up data from a central store indicated at 52. The data
store 52 comprises a large number of registers Rl5 R2, R3 and so forth, each of
which holds data specific to one patient. Control apparatus 54 is associated with
the data store 52 and includes a telecommunications interface.
The arrangement of Figure 5 works as follows. Each patient wears a
bracelet, dog-tag or the like engraved or otherwise indelibly marked with a
connection number (together with some symbol to indicate that this number gives
access to medical information about the patient). The connection number has two
parts - a first part representing the telephone number of the data store and a
second part identifying a register in that store which holds information specific to
the patient. In an emergency, any person attending the patient can key the
connection number into the mobile phone 50, and thus setting up a call A to the
data store 52. The control apparatus identifies from the second part of the
connection number that register RP which holds information for the
corresponding patient, and sends a return call B requesting the telephone number
of the mobile telephone 50 to be entered. When that is keyed in it is transmitted as
indicated by C, and when the control apparatus 54 receives this it automatically
accesses the data in the register RP as indicated by D and transmits it to the mobile
telephone 50 as indicated by E. The transmitted data appears on the screen of the
mobile telephone 50, where it is seen by the person attending the patient, which
person can then give the patient appropriate on-the-spot treatment.
The control apparatus 54 may include translation means responsive to the
call number of the mobile telephone 50 to transmit the data in a language
appropriate to the territory of the mobile telephone. It may also be enhanced so as
automatically to identify the call number of the mobile telephone and to transmit
thereto the data specific to the patient.
Finally, it should be understood that the invention may be used to provide
information about a virtually unlimited range of medical conditions and may for
instance replace conventional organ donor cards, blood group identifiers or even
the no-transfusion declarations used by some religious sects.