8
doc • February - March 2014
Kentucky
The SMART Medical Home:
Futuristic Home Health Care
By Thomas W. Miller Ph.D. ABPP,
Staff Writer
For physician, health care provider and
patient, the 21st century will be the century
of quality of life and health. New technologies have been developed to assist patients
with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia
to adapt and live in a home setting. Designed
as a “living laboratory,” the University of
Rochester’s “Smart Medical Home” is a crossdisciplinary research effort to develop interactive technology for home health care. It may
forever change your notions of personalized
medicine and home.
The “Smart Medical Home” is the
creation of a cross-disciplinary group
of scientists and engineers from the
college, the Medical Center, and the
university’s Center for Future Health.
The result is a comfortable apartment,
a residential oasis with a spacious
kitchen, dining room, living room,
and bedroom, surrounded by the busy
labs and offices of the Medical Center.
Thus the “smart home” is a venture to
help patients and caregivers who may
benefit from computer based technol-
ogy in their homes to improve and maintain
health and wellness.
Patient Education in the
SMART Home
The “Personal Medical Advisor” offers key
information to the patient in the home on a
wall-mounted monitor. A computer-animated
character called “Chester the Pill” stands
ready to discuss medical health. Users of the
future would be able to interact with the computer by speaking normally, asking questions
about which medicines to take or getting
advice about symptoms of an illness.
Developing the technology to bring Chester
to life emphasizes the project’s interdisciplinary nature. Computer scientists are developing the virtual intelligence software, while
doctors oversee the database of medical
information.