This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to build a system that enhances understanding of the patient?s body pressure characteristics, such that it can provide assistive/cognitive support to hospital staff to prevent pressure ulcer. The intellectual merit of this project is an enabling technology that integrates analytics within a software platform for monitoring, prevention and management of pressure ulcers. Research efforts will focus on implementation of modules for whole-body pressure distribution data collection, posture classification, limb tracking, risk assessment, turning schedule utilization and patient status reporting. The anticipated result of this project is a software platform that can be employed as an assistive technology tool by caregivers for monitoring at-risk patients more effectively. This platform will work well with the pressure mat systems in the market, with the following abilities: (i) to receive data (raw pressure images) collected from pressure mats by customers (e.g. hospitals) in a HIPPA-compliant server; (ii) to apply image processing/enhancement techniques on uploaded data so that the analytics can run with a reasonable accuracy; and (iii) to provide key analysis data that improves caregiver cognition of the status of patient and assist them in making informative decisions for risk assessment and ulcer prevention.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project will be to create a commercially viable software package for monitoring, prevention and management of one of the most costly, acute health conditions, pressure ulcers - or bed sores. Unfortunately, conventional techniques have not been very successful due to overworked nursing staff who frequently miss turning patients, scarcity and high cost of special mattresses and pressure map systems and more importantly difficulty of interpreting pressure images by nurses/doctors. Statistics show that 11-23% of the patients in hospitals and nursing homes (3-6 million) in the United States develop pressure ulcers that cost our healthcare system more than $1.2 billion annually. Pressure ulcers represent an enormous burden on our healthcare system, in general, and an enormous problem for healthcare providers (e.g. hospitals and assisted-living homes) in particular. This SBIR proposal has the potential to have a significant impact by offering an important technology to the healthcare community. The potential societal and commercial impact includes: (a) effective ulcer prevention that will dramatically enhance quality of life and reduce patient suffering and discomfort; and (b) significant decrease in ever-escalating healthcare cost related to pressure ulcers.
Intellectual Merit: The goal of this project, in general, is to build a system that enhances understanding of the patient's body-surface pressure interactions and characteristics, such that it can provide assistive/cognitive support to caregivers in order to prevent pressure ulcer (also known as bed sore). We have converted Dena Technologies' intellectual property (i.e. pressure map analytics) to a user-friendly software prototype. This Beta-version product is a plug & play pressure map analytics package that employs advanced signal/image processing and machine learning techniques to perform image enhancement, posture detection, limb tracking, risk assessment and patient status reporting customized for caregivers. Dena Technologies' software platform consists of four main modules as shown in the attached figure: (i) a bedside application/GUI (e.g. running on a tablet) to show the real-time pressure images and the high-risk areas collected from pressure mats; (ii) an internet-based delivery mechanism to transmit the raw pressure data to a server through a secure channel; (iii) a client's web portal for patients/mats management and sending the request for data analysis; and (iv) status report generation, where, per client's request, Dena's analytics (various image processing, machine learning and risk assessment techniques) are applied to the uploaded data and an informative report is generated that is accessible/printable from the web portal. This report improves caregiver's cognition and assists them in performing an accurate risk assessment and making an informed patient-specific decision for ulcer prevention. Broader Impacts: Pressure ulcers represent an enormous burden on our healthcare system. Statistics reported for 2009-2011 period by the National Center of Health Statistics (NCHS) and the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel (NPUAP) show that 11-23% of all the patients in hospitals and nursing homes in the United States (about 3-6 million annually) develop pressure ulcers. Based on a nationwide survey of around 170 hospitals in 2011, the total U.S. expenditure for wound care treatment was $11 billion annually; one wound can cost over $40,000 to heal. At the same time, the shortage of nurses is estimated at 6% and is expected to grow to 20% by 2015 and, if not addressed, to 29% by 2020. There is a dire need for more effective solutions for accurate risk assessment and pressure ulcer prevention. The potential impact of Dena Technologies' solution cannot be overstated. In addition to reducing the discomfort and sufferings in hundreds of patients who develop bed sores, it significantly reduces the cost of re-admission and treatment. More specifically, Beta-version of Dena Technologies' analytics can help caregivers to utilize their critical resources (doctors and nurses) by providing automatic and continuous risk assessment. The patient-specific reports will assist caregivers in making informed decisions (i.e. what are the at-risk regions and when/how to offload the pressure) and minimizing occurrence and the chance of re-admission. Ultimately, using our platform, the health institutions can minimize the non-reimbursable pressure ulcer related cost and sustain their compliance with health regulations.
