Family Care: At Home Ultrasound

Home Ultrasound Imaging

Family physicians can order a wide range of imaging services for patients. But barriers such as time, money, and physical distance sometimes prevent patients from accessing those services, causing gaps in care. Incorporating point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) into clinical practice is one way to bridge those gaps.

Technological advancements have allowed more physicians to bring ultrasound services to the office visit or bedside, and to make POCUS ultrasound an integral part of the practice.

There is robust evidence that POCUS improves care in critically ill patients and improves the efficiency and safety of many invasive ambulatory surgeries that are otherwise performed blindly or by anatomic landmarks. There is also preliminary but growing evidence that POCUS can improve diagnostic capabilities, expedite patient care, and inform bedside treatment and management. Most recently, POCUS has proven to be a valuable tool for confirming COVID-19 diagnosis, as well as monitoring some symptoms of the disease.

Portable Home Ultrasound Machine For COVID-19 Diagnosis

COVID-19 greatly increased the demand for handheld POCUS ultrasound systems

New ultrasound users are driving the growth of the medical point ultrasound (POCUS) market. In order to succeed in the handheld ultrasound market, suppliers need to continue to provide convenience for inexperienced users. Handheld POCUS ultrasound, which combines improved imaging performance, clinical practicability and low price, expands market opportunities outside hospital departments, including office clinical experts. A primary care doctor can equip a very useful diagnostic tool for a surgical operation at a very small cost. This scenario is expected to become the largest medium - and long-term growth driver of this product category.

By 2020, the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has greatly increased the demand for a handheld ultrasound. The home ultrasound kit for pregnancy has become a first-line diagnostic tool for coronavirus patients. The availability of affordable and user-friendly handheld scanners helps hospitals process more patients faster - a key factor in an exponentially growing pandemic. Handheld ultrasound machine for pregnancy, especially the wireless version, are easier to disinfect than the traditional cart-based system and other imaging methods. Infected patients do not have to go through the hospital to enter the imaging department, which increases the risk of infection transmission. However, it is predicted that the driving force of COVID-19 as at home mini ultrasound machine for pregnancy applications will be weakened because the worst impact of the pandemic (hope) will continue to ease.

The coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent blockade measures implemented by many governments in the world force people to do something at home that used to be done on professional occasions.

In the medical field, the personal family has become a working environment, partly due to the increasing popularity of handheld ultrasonic systems. In these areas, people are scanned at home. Suspected COVID-19 infected people no longer need to go to the crowded emergency room. They can avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19 or avoid being infected by others, provided that they are not infected.

Handheld ultrasonic telemedicine breaks through the distance limit

First, most home ultrasound scanner have built-in presets that can be used to quickly obtain key measurements. For example, the automatic ejection fraction of the heart of the expected due date of the fetus can be calculated automatically by systematic tools.

Secondly, another contributing factor is remote ultrasound, which transmits real-time ultrasound images to experts through the remote conference to guide novice users. During the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in remote ultrasound was strengthened. In addition to a typical remote Ultrasound product, trained professionals can see the scan remotely and talk to untrained professionals through the process. The system superimposes arrows on the user's smartphone to intuitively guide the novice to ensure the correct position of the scanner itself.

Then, AI will also play a key role in helping novices use ultrasound, including AI-supported image capture assistance and automatic anatomical navigation.

Finally, ultrasound probe manufacturers release easy to understand YouTube tutorials that can help consumers learn and use them intuitively. Novices can follow the video to learn how to locate the IQ scanner, the content displayed on the smartphone screen, the settings to press and the specific scanning location.

It is worth mentioning that the coronavirus pandemic and the need to keep people away from hospitals as far as possible mean that it is increasingly possible to carry out more ultrasound tests at home. Initially, it is the responsibility of professionals, but for patients with certain diseases who need to be scanned regularly, they receive handheld devices and basic training at home and then let them scan themselves at a given frequency, and the images are sent directly to the doctor, which may prove safer, more effective and cheaper in the long run.

According to the study of Zanobetti and Scorpiniti, POCUS is a reliable diagnostic method for patients with dyspepsia, which can reduce the diagnostic time. There was no statistically significant difference between the accuracy of POCUS and standard ED in the diagnosis of dyspepsia caused by coronary syndrome, pneumonia, pleural effusion, pericardial effusion, pneumothorax and other reasons; POCUS is more sensitive to the diagnosis of heart failure, while standard ED treatment is better in the diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and pulmonary embolism.

Portable at home ultrasound machine for pregnancy

Ultrasound is transitioning from the clinical environment to the family environment, which is a new popular trend and has been growing steadily in recent years.

Changes in serum creatinine and/or urine volume during pregnancy or puerperium, POCUS can help to distinguish postrenal and prerenal renal failure. After excluding post-renal causes, the most common cause should consider preeclampsia or eclampsia. POCUS can find renal enlargement and enhanced echo of the renal parenchyma. However, these signs are not unique to preeclampsia and eclampsia, such as acute tubular necrosis or glomerulonephritis. Therefore, it is very important to consider the situation in combination with patients' medical history.

The ultrasonic transducer launched by our company can be connected with smartphones to realize an intelligent experience. The device can not only help pregnant women "enhance the pregnancy experience", but also help pregnant women "understand the health status of their babies". In just a few years, at home ultrasound has changed from a clinical tool to a technology. Theoretically, it can be used by anyone at any time and anywhere.

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