Chip maker develops intelligent quick health check kiosk

Bangalore: Chip maker Freescale Technology has developed a low-cost intelligent hospital kiosk that enables patients to quickly check their health parameters and seek a physician's advice through the internet.

"The electronic kiosk is a biometric data acquisition system that assesses a person's health and performs basic medical tests, including for body temperature, blood pressure, blood sugar level and electrocardiogram (ECG) of heart," Freescale development manager Jose Fernandez told IANS here.

Weighing about 30kg, the touch-screen kiosk was developed by Freescale's engineering team in Mexico as a low-cost solution for quick and accurate screening tests to know a patient's health prior to hospitalisation.

"The kiosk has also a portable USB (universal serial bus) device that can be operated at home or in remote location and relay the biometric data through internet to a hospital or physician for quick investigation and treatment," Fernandez said on the margins of the company's sixth technology forum.

Medical data

The kiosk has an integrated analog for recording medical data with Freescale 32-bit micro-controllers and software developed in-house. It also records a person's height, weight and blood group.

"We have designed and developed the intelligent kiosk with $500,000 (Dh1.8 million) funding from the Mexican government, which has placed an order to supply about 50 of them for installation in state-run hospitals across the North American country," Fernandez said at a preview of the product.

The intelligent kiosks can also be installed at airports, railway stations, bus terminals and malls to enable people operate it by following instructions that pop up on its touchscreen.

"Our kiosk demonstrates the kind of electronics technology and embedded software we have developed in our Indian research and development centre at Noida near Delhi for a range of medical devices," Fernandez said.

The Freescale technology in the kiosk boasts of micro-processors, controller chips, signal processing controllers, pressure sensors and wireless and communication devices. The US-based $3.5-billion semiconductor firm has shipped the kiosk from Mexico to this tech hub for a demo and pitch for response from its end-users.