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Centurion LINQ - Integrating eHealth Community Care

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11 Feb 2015CPOL4 min read 13.1K   2   3
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This article is an entry in our AppInnovation Contest. Articles in this sub-section are not required to be full articles so care should be taken when voting.

Introduction  

 

 

Application Name: Centurion Linq
Category (Platform): Healthcare (Tablet)

Change the philosophy behind traditional healthcare with Centurion Linq, a fully integrated mobile eHealth Community Care patient-provider platform.

A portal, if you will, linking a provider (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and home-healthcare practitioners), remote and community care, ancillary support services and facilities, a health record/data (in real-time!), and a patient... 

 Image 1

 

Many patients rely on their relatives, friends, or community to take them to clinics for regular check-ups, treatments, or medications. The trip to clinic can become a challenge for the individual, adding to their inconvenience and lack of compliance towards care. Or there is no trip. Meaning no healthcare.

The primary intent of visiting a care provider, facility, center, and healthcare business is to receive health care services and products. Let’s move that to our place of comfort and convenience: home. Our mission is to C-improvement: 

 

  • CARE: Provide personalized care to the elderly, disabled, chronically ill, remotely located, and community
  • CONVENIENCE: Bring many of the necessary mobile health and ancillary services to the patients - incorporating Phalanx Linq Analytics Platform (for facilities and businesses in community and remote care, advisement, and support services)
  • CLOUD: Use informatics and technology to avoid redundant testing, over-medicating, and wasteful administration -> health analytics -> predictive models -> clinical guidelines -> best practice advisories 
  • COST: Offer preventive and maintenance health care to patients to minimize and prevent unneeded visits to clinics, hospitals, and labs

Overview

Facilitate efficient and convenient healthcare at the point of care!

Instead of patients visiting offices, centers, and facilities for care, Centurion Linq facilitates sending professional healthcare providers to visit patients . Relatives and friends don’t have to miss their work and commitments to bring patients to the clinics. Patients don't have to be inconvenienced in their own day-to-day lives. The doctors visit at home (physically or virtually) is as effort-free as it gets. 

For past 2 decades, visiting providers have gained popularity. Healthcare plans, medical insurance, and Medicare have acknowledged increase in reimbursements in this sector of the market. Why? Because it costs less for preventive care and treatment at home (and the right time) relative to treatment at an office, clinic, or hospital. 

For reference, examples of Centurion Linq optimized personalized healthcare: 

  • Facilitation of scheduling appointments, followups, questions/inquiries, instructions, and counseling
  • Physical examinations  (general history and physical, routine observation, specialty examination)
  • Vitals and systems monitoring and documenting (blood pressure, blood glucose control, medications, wound care)
  • Delivery and administration of medical equipment, therapy, medications to patients 
  • Mobile diagnostic testing services and accessible options in the community
  • Real-time patient health information and data, accessible AND usable for both patient and provider 

A few of the ancillary health services possible through Centurion Linq:

  • Oral care (Dental services)
  • Foot and ankle care (Orthopedic and Podiatry services)
  • Eye and ENT care (Ophthalmologist, Otolaryngologist) 
  • Adolescent and elderly care (Pediatrician, Geriatric) 
  • Skin and health-spa services (Dermatologist and aesthetician
  • Therapy: physical, occupational, rehab, speech/audio
  • Administrations and infusions (IVs, medications, implantables)
  • Delivery of health goods, equipment, materiel
  • Remote lab and diagnostic testing (web-enabled and Centurion Linq interfaced)
  • Sono/echo studies and interventional examinations
  • Post-surgical care management (catheter, wound, stoma)  
  • Home/domestic heath aid (bathing, dieting, and socialization)

Development and Technical Overview

We are extensively using the Microsoft Windows 8 SDK and Visual Studio Professional 2012 to develop the Windows 8 tablet app. C# is the language we've chosen. Outside of the rich tablet application, data is hosted in the cloud and application will communicate directly with servers running the Phalanx platform via a REST API (using WCF) using OAuth for authentication and robust security. 

Image 2

We're taking a hybrid approach towards development incorporating minimum-viable-product / solve-big-problems-first. MVP validates our product on the business side while addressing big complex technical challenges gives us a competitive edge.

On the topic of interesting technical challenges, we're looking forward to porting a technology we call PhalanxSync to the Windows 8 platform. What is PhalanxSync? It's part mobile-cloud database sync, part app logic container that acknowledges A) the ever growing ubiquity of always-connected internet access, B) wide-spread adoption of REST, C) growing popularity of single page web apps with the reality of drops, lags, and outages in mobile network connections. The need for a technical solution in this space crystallized during the early design exercise that also gave birth to Phalanx Linq. We think the combination of Microsoft WCF + PhalanxSync will improve development speed - and ultimately end user experience - by abstracting away the complexities of network conditions and freeing developers and designers to craft elegant and powerful UX.

The built-in security features and form-factor make the Windows 8 tablet a natural fit for mobile-enabled doctors, nurses, and caregivers. We plan to extensively take advantage of the following features:

  • We'll interface directly with Windows.UI.Input.Inking, RealTimeStylus to interface with the digitizer & stylus to capture signatures and power parts of the UI.
  • GestureRecognizer will be used to build intuitive touch & gesture interactions.
  • Naturally, 4G LTE, Wifi will be used for connectivity on-the-road.
  • Likewise, GPS, compass, Bing Maps SDK will be used for geolocation, travel logging, intelligent route planning.
  • Dual cameras will be used for Skype/video conferencing. 

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Team Leader
United States United States
Umar Siddiqui is a Medical Doctorate clinical informatics professional and Health IT entrepreneur. Currently, he serves a role with transforming Scott & White Healthcare’s 13 hospitals and 100-plus clinics. Also, he is the co-founder (and interim President) of vPhysicians. His educational background includes a BSci in Neuro-science from University of Pittsburgh and an MD from American University School of Medicine with clinical appointment and internship with The Barts London and Royal College of Surgeons in the UK.

Umar has earned professional certifications in Health IT, Agile Development, Surgical Information Systems, and life-science sales and marketing, along with continuing formal coursework in health informatics, analytics, and engineering. He maintains an active involvement with various professional organizations (HIMSS, TORCH) and ongoing participation with advisory boards, civic organizations, and entrepreneurial communities as well as mentoring other Health IT professionals.

Umar's technology interests are in building applications in .Net, C#, OData, and SQL that turn raw data into deep insight. He recently built Phalanx Linq, a healthcare data analytics application that earned him 2nd place in the 2013 D&B Developer Contest run by CodeProject.

Umar's health interests include analytics, predictive models, evidence based medicine, clinical guidelines, and quality data-science. He is passionate towards the improvement of population health through technology by developing and implementing informatics tools to fully utilize and model electronic health data. Health information today will be health intelligence tomorrow.

Comments and Discussions

 
QuestionHow's app development going? Will you be submitting on time? Pin
Kevin Priddle23-Oct-13 5:24
professionalKevin Priddle23-Oct-13 5:24 
GeneralOngoing... Pin
UmarSiddiqui25-Oct-13 4:55
professionalUmarSiddiqui25-Oct-13 4:55 
GeneralRe: Ongoing... Pin
Kevin Priddle25-Oct-13 10:51
professionalKevin Priddle25-Oct-13 10:51 

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