#Industry News
Video Technology for New Care Delivery Services
The Center for Innovative Medical Technology (CIMT) at Odense University Hospital (OUH) in Denmark is developing innovative technologies to improve patient care and clinical work flows.
Claus Duedal Pedersen, Chief Consultant at the OUH innovation unit, talked about a video-based project to treat COPD patients at home.
ME e-magazine: What is the story that originated the CIMT?
Claus Duedal Pedersen: It really is a development that has taken place over the past 15 years. The basic idea was to connect technology specialists and healthcare professionals and thereby deliver services to patients in new ways. So we set up a number of projects, such as the Patient Briefcase in 2006, where we experimented with video conferencing to treat COPD patients at home. However, healthcare is an evidence-based business and around 2009 we realized that we were not doing enough in that direction. So in order to have the scientific capacity to conduct serious studies around our projects, we created the CIMT.
ME e-magazine: The Patient Briefcase was one of your earliest video-based projects. How did you come up with the idea?
Claus Duedal Pedersen: The pulmonary department in one of the hospitals approached us, wishing to change the way they were delivering care to people with COPD. Their main issue was that these patients were in and out of the hospital too frequently – on average they needed to be admitted about four times a year for six to eight days each. They told us, that if we were able to give them a technology that provides them with a picture of the patient and a way to remotely take pulse oximetry and spirometry measurements, they would be able to treat these patients at home. So we cooperated with a small company to build the device, had a prototype commissioned and started a small trial. Afterwards we built more evidence in a bigger randomized control study.
