ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280076
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ROBERT S. BOYD KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
THIS NEW COMPUTER won't practice medicine, but it certainly will keep frail folks monitored.
Picture this: It's 1998, and your elderly mother, who lives alone in another city, refuses to go into a nursing home even though she suffers from arthritis and a weak heart.
Despite her frailty, she insists she can live more cheaply and comfortably in her apartment. Naturally, you worry about her falling sick with no one around to check on her. And her insurer is eager to hold down the cost of her care.
So, under a home-care plan developed by the federal government and private industry, the health maintenance organization installs a personal medical computer in your mom's home that will keep track of her condition and electronically notify her doctor or clinic when a problem develops.
If, like many elderly people, she is unable or unwilling to use a computer keyboard or mouse, she can simply talk to the machine. It's programmed to ask questions like, ``What is your temperature?'' or ``How long have you been feeling dizzy?'' It will take down her replies for later relay over a phone line to the doctor's office.
At first, your mom - or a relative, friend or neighbor - will respond to the computer by speaking or typing answers to its questions. Eventually, in more advanced systems, devices attached to the computer could automatically check her pulse rate, blood pressure, heart and lung sounds and other symptoms and alert the doctor in case of emergency.
``The computer won't practice medicine; it won't replace the doctor or the nurse. But maybe it will replace the nurse's assistant at the front desk,'' explained James Barnett, senior scientist at Dragon Systems Inc., in Newton, Mass. His company is building a medical speech-recognition system with the help of a $1.9 million grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Speech recognition is the difficult art of converting spoken language into computer text that can be stored, read and communicated to others electronically. A number of companies, including IBM and Kurzweil Applied Intelligence of Waltham, Mass., are trying to perfect such machines.
When it goes on the market about two years from now, a home health talking computer will cost about $20,000, according to Nicholas Miller, Dragon's business manager. The developers intend to have the cost paid by the HMO in hopes it will save money in the long run.
Barnett said the Dragon system is ``intended to reduce visits to the hospital or doctor's office for chronically - but not critically - ill people who could be at home.'' He added, ``Just a couple days out of the hospital could save enough money to pay for the system.''
The Council on Competitiveness, an organization of top business and labor leaders headed by Xerox Corp. Chairman Paul Allaire, estimated that computerized home health monitoring should cost about $30 a day. That compares with $74 for a visit by a skilled nurse, $100 for a day in a nursing home or more than $800 for a day in a hospital.
In a report published this week, the council said many of the 2 million Americans in nursing homes are there for ``security'' rather than health reasons, and up to 10 percent of them could be cared for at home ``at significantly reduced cost if the appropriate tools were available to enable remote monitoring.''
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB