Sorry, the Change seminar is in CSE 203 (not 205 as I said before). On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Nicola Dell <nixdell@cs.washington.edu>wrote:
This Thursday at Change Waylon Brunette will speak about his research on a portable antenatal ultrasound platform for village midwifes. Please note that the seminar will be in the Allen center, CSE 205. The room currently listed on the MyUW website (MOR 225) is incorrect.
While ultrasound imaging is an effective tool for identifying maternal mortality risk factors, it is nearly absent in many rural healthcare facilities in developing regions. The high costs of both equipment and required training are major barriers to adopting ultrasound; to address these barriers we designed an inexpensive ultrasound system composed of off-the-shelf hardware and custom software. To leverage existing healthcare systems commonly found in these contexts, we focused our efforts on increasing the diagnostic capabilities of midwives - often central medical figures in rural and low-income communities. To enable local midwives to identify high-risk conditions for referral to a better-equipped health care facility, we developed a low-cost, portable, easy-to-use ultrasound system. Compared to currently available ultrasound devices, we simplified the user workflow and interface while maintaining adequate functionality to allow midwives to detect three common obstetrical conditions: placenta previa, multiple gestations, and breech presentation. Specifically, the midwife's ultrasound system is designed to: support a solitary work environment, balance cost and features, present a minimal interface, enable easy customization through a modular design, provide appropriate scaffolding to assist the user, and include an integrated teaching help system. Complicated and expensive medical technologies are unlikely to meet the needs of users with limited opportunities for formal training and continuing education, so we created an appropriate integrated help system to supplement a midwife's conceptual and operational knowledge of diagnostic ultrasound. Through our fieldwork in Uganda and preliminary evaluations, we have found that in addition to the contextual reference material accessible during an exam, midwives need in-depth learning materials that can be accessed outside of a medical exam scenario. To evaluate whether or system was appropriate for identifying the three conditions, we tested the accuracy of ultrasound measurements, image quality, and the usability of our system by Ugandan midwives. The midwife's ultrasound system is designed to utilize existing local healthcare resources in order to create a sustainable solution that does not depend on telemedicine or other continuous foreign assistance.
Waylon Brunette is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington advised by Professor Gaetano Borriello. His research interests include mobile systems, leveraging smartphones and sensors to solve problems in healthcare, and designing systems that improve the lives of underserved populations in low-income regions.
What: Waylon Brunette on portable antenatal ultrasound for village midwifes.
Where: The Allen Center, CSE 203.
When: Thursday, March 29th at 12 noon.