Carrying Your Vital Signs With You

1. Carrying Your Vital Signs With You Jonathan Otero Suárez Metropolitan University, San Juan, Puerto Rico NSF REU: “Creating Computer Applications for Medicine” 08/07/2007

2. Outline • Motivation • Goals • Current State-of-the-Art • Approach • Design • Demonstration • Conclusion • Future Work • References • Acknowledgements

3. Motivation • When our doctor recommend to keep track of our vital signs we write the results in different places and then we lose them and that's a problem. This is why it is a good idea to develop an application that allow us to save this information in our cellular phones because nowdays it is something that everyone has.

4. Goals • To become familiar with the J2ME technology. • To increase the skills in the Java programming language. • To develop an application directed to specifically to store information about the vital signs of the body in cellular phones.

5. Current State-of-the-Art • Vital Signs are measurements of the body's most basic functions. They include the measurements of: body temperature, pulse rate, respiration rate and blood pressure. These parameters provide critical information about a person's state of health. • There are several methods to store information like for example desktop applications that allow us to store some type of medical information. An application directed specifically to store information about the vital signs of the body in a place where you can have easy access for future consultation like a cellular phone is not yet created.

6. Approach • We used a technology called Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) which permits the ability to develop applications for cellular phones, PDAs, pagers among other devices. • The J2ME technology has two kinds of components: - configurations: is a set of low-level APIs and a virtual machine optimized for a family of devices. For this approach we used the CLDC 1.1 configuration. - profiles: complements a configuration by adding classes that provide features appropiate for specific market segment. For this approach we used the MIDP 2.1 profile.

7. Design: Demo Vital Signs 1.0 Vital Signs Demo 1.0 (MIDlet)‏ Submit test results. Search for test results. Send test results through email. Application Security Provides the ability to save the test results of once vital signs on to a cellular phone. Provides the ability to review previous history allowing the user to take a look at files and records. Provides the ability to send the previously save data through email. Provides security for the application allowing the user to set a login id and a password. Implemented using the Record Management System. Implemented using the Generic Connection Framework.

8. Demonstration: Demo Vital Signs 1.0

9. Conclusion • It is evident that cellular phones provide the perfect atmosphere to develop new applications in the field of medicine. • Because we are able to use only the classes available in the chosen profile this made a complex and limited programming. • In some occasions the reaction of the emulator under new programming instructions was unexpected bringing with it the need of consuming time looking for new methods for the programming.

10. Future Work • Add a function to provide an accurate analysis based upon results of vital signs measurement, considering the differences between individuals. • Bluetooth could provide an efficient and automated method of transferring vital signs to a user's cellphone.

11. References • Tremblett, P. (2002). Instant Wireless Java with J2ME. McGraw-Hill. • Muchow, J. (2002). Core J2ME. Prentice Hall PTR. • Cardiovascular Diseases. (2004, February 10). Vital Signs. Retrieve June 25, 2007, from the University of Virginia Health System Web site: http://www.healthsystem.virgnia.edu/UVAHealth/adult_cardiac/vital.cfm

12. Acknowledgments • Dr. Alfred C. Weaver • Mr. Andrew Jurik • Mr. Paul Bui • Mrs. Beth Shannon