Patient-Centric Medical Database with Remote Urinalysis Test

Personal health is a world-wide issue which poses a lot of problems especially for those who live in developing countries where quality health services may be scarce. In addition, it becomes difficult for the poor to be proactive in maintaining and monitoring their health if access to their own medical records and lab tests is inconvenient and expensive. Thus, a patient-centric medical database with an integrated urinalysis test was developed to help solve the above mentioned problems. The patient-centric medical database called ECMED (electronic medical database) is a patient owned repository for medical records which is made accessible via the Internet and/or the GSM network (using low cost mobile phones). The database stores important patient information as well as laboratory test scores and reports for electrocardiogram (ECG) and urine analysis (UA). Using an automated urinalysis test, the database receives multimedia messaging service (MMS) images of urinalysis strips and automatically processes the images to get urinalysis scores. The patient can also use short messaging service (SMS), more commonly known as text messaging, to report urinalysis scores. In addition, urinalysis testing and record updating can also be done on-line.