TeleHealth Database

Database Goals

• To act in conjunction with the TeleHealth Module's ability to gather medical data
  • Take data from TeleHealth Module to assist in diagnosis
• To be a medical diagnostic aid for use by people with little to no medical education or training
  • Pictures, simple questions, very user-friendly
  • Will take all available data (from questions and from TeleHealth Module) and formulate probable diagnoses
• To be a clear, concise guide to first aid and emergent care for use by people with little to no medical education or training
  • Animations, user-friendly to the extreme
  • Will use data to formulate best treatment options
    • Will consider all available resources in decision on how best to treat patient (likely without many/any formal medical resources)
• To act as a medical reference

All of the goals boil down to this one hope: to elongate and improve life

Expectations

• Will be helpful in situations where trained medical personnel are either unavailable or unreachable.
  • Not to be used in place of a doctor or other person trained in medicine

Implementation

• It will possibly be supplemented with Javascript/SVG based animations.
• It will eventually be composed of the:
  • an expert-system diagnosis aid
    • Based on PyClips?
  • central reference database
    • based on the XTerm Medical Dictionary
  • documentation for the TeleHealth Module

Progress

• User:DyD has collected some diagnosis aids used by a local hospital.
• Ian Daniher has been corresponding with Aurelian, creator of XTerm Medical Dictionary, and he has graciously offered to license the database allow OLPC and direct affiliates access and an ability to freely distribute it.

Problems

• Sheer volume of work - thousands of diseases/ailments/injuries to classify, code, and document
• The biggest problem here is legal liability, a hefty disclaimer may be needed.
• Doing this without any medical background - can we find a doctor willing to help us out on this one?
• Testing - this will need plenty of testing to make sure everything is accurate and working before it is distributed
• Timeline - will likely take longer than will the TeleHealth Module to be completed
  • Can a basic version be completed in time to be distributed with the MP of the TeleHealth Module?
  • Will be in a perpetual state of needing improvement, as medical advances keep changing the face of medicine
    • Is someone that is able to keep up with medical advances willing to commit to supporting long-term updates?

Resources

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Health_Organization_Essential_Medicines
• http://www.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online/
• http://www.hesperian.org/publications_download.php
• http://www.medical-dictionary.ro/index.html
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Human_Physiology
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikislice/Medical
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THM_:_DB
• http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/contact.cfm
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Contributors

• Ian Daniher
• Steven Burns
• Zdenek Broz
• The XTerm Medical Dictionary Contributors
  • A. S. Ivan, M.D.
    • Christoph Champ
    • Y.A. Hamed M.D.
    • Madalina Marin, D.D.S
    • Sam Vaknin