Canadian Healthcare Technology: Innovations in Medical and Health Services

Canadian Healthcare Technology
Canadian Healthcare Technology

Canada! What do you associate this country with? With a maple leaf and colorful nature or with strong hockey and mounted policemen in red uniforms?

Doctors in Canada are an important part of the country’s economy. They pay large taxes. Together with strict control and constant checks of Canadian graduates, as well as too strict adherence to treatment protocols, this leads to a regular outflow of personnel to the United States. At the same time, the complicated verification of foreign doctors does not cover the need for personnel in the provinces of the country. Family medicine occupies a significant part in the medical care system. It is worth noting that 40 percent of Canadian doctors are family medicine physicians. What uses of digital health solutions are deemed acceptable in Canada nowadays? 

Robotics

Among medical hardware and computer systems, robotics deserves special attention. Robot mannequins, robot couriers, and robot nurses are already a reality. A large number of robots have appeared that perform extremely complex manipulations. For example, the self-assembled ARES robot for performing operations without cutting the skin. The individual functional blocks swallowed by the patient inside the body are assembled into a controlled module, which is used to perform surgery.

Artificial intelligence

Almost artificial. And it will help not only in making a diagnosis, but also in choosing treatment. AI will probably not become a full-fledged substitute for a doctor, but it will definitely become a useful tool and assistant in diagnosis and treatment.

This was proved by the work of IBM Watson supercomputer equipped with an AI question-and-answer system. It has access to many sources of information: databases of scientific articles, encyclopedias, anthologies of knowledge. Its impressive computing power allows it to provide the most accurate answer to a question after processing it.

A separate actively developing project IBM Medical Sieve is aimed at diagnosing as many diseases as possible in the field of radiology and cardiology in the shortest possible time thanks to smart software. And they are interpreted in several formats (clinical tests, X-ray, ultrasound, CT, MRI, PET).

In the future, IBM Medical Sieve, firstly, will free up some time for specialists, and instead of checking hundreds of scans every day, they will be able to concentrate on the most complex cases.

Secondly, the software will make the diagnosis faster and more accurately, because the doctor is a human being, who is inherent to make mistakes and miss some defects and neoplasms, especially in a tired state.

According to IBM representatives, Medical Sieve is a new generation in the field of medical technology. 

3D printing

IRisky and complex operations are carefully planned. Various modeling methods, including 3D printing, also help.

3D printing is beginning to be used in medical education, giving students and surgeons an alternative to a live person. Experts at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) have developed the ability to create artificial organs that not only look and feel like real ones, but even bleed.

There are many companies working in the field of 3D bioprinting. They tend to have a narrow specialization. For example, 3Dynamic Systems makes human tissue, bone and muscle, and Nano3D creates breast cancer tissue for biological research.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Virtual reality helmet-work exampleIn the minds of the people, VR technology is just movies and games. It is the entertainment focus of virtual reality. But IT oracles are sure: VR – a new technical revolution, including the ability to change our communication. And medicine, of course.

It’s not just about the sensational case against pain from the American startup from San Francisco – DeepStreamVR. Thus, virtual reality and a special game distract from unpleasant sensations, making it possible to eliminate the use of opioid drugs, which are addictive and, in addition, have side effects.

According to a study by physician Ted Jones and professor Todd Moore, all patients reported an improvement in their condition after a VR session. The “pre-therapy pain to post-therapy condition ratio” was also taken into account. This ratio decreased by 33%

Virtual reality also helps in diagnosis, schizophrenia for example. The guys from AlterEgo proposed to do it with the help of a computer avatar. The patient must repeat his movements with maximum accuracy. Analyzing the results reveals mental abnormalities. 

Blockchain

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that can withstand such cyberattacks by ensuring constant synchronization and backup of personal data. It is an advanced model for ensuring the security of personal data, which will help to avoid the loss and theft of such information on a large scale,” says Michael Smolenski, blockchain technology developer at MotionWerk.

Tom Serres, co-founder of Animal Ventures, believes that blockchain technology is an ideal solution for remote patient monitoring. He says that compared to centralized access systems, blockchain will provide a more reliable level of security for medical data. It will be incredibly difficult for hackers to access patient data protected by blockchain technology due to encryption and the creation of multiple copies of encrypted data.

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