TED Community » Cheng Zhang

More About Me

I'm passionate about

My interest is in novel and non-invasive biomedical imaging devices. More recently, I have also developed a special interest in emerging healthcare technology and telemedicine.

An idea worth spreading

Using the growing influence of social networking to serve patients with chronic diseases is how healthcare can distribute personalized information (e.g. treatment, research and findings). Personally, my interest is in developing cost effective devices for personal health monitoring. Beyond treating the patients, we have to treat our healthcare system as well (not only from a policy standpoint) through the utilization of EHR and telemedicine.

Talk to me about

Biomedical Imaging (Optical Coherence TOmography), image processing, healthcare technology

People don't know that I'm good at

Matlab programming

Comments

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• A reply on Conversation: How to effectively reduce alarm fatigue in hospitals?

  Oct 17 2011: Actually, there is a group of clinical engineers (representatives from several different hospitals) working on solutions including organizations like AAMI and HTF. But what I'm really looking for are simple approaches we can take like designing a more sound absorbent room, or feeding patients with white noise to drown out the alarm.
  
  Ultimately, I'm posting this on TED to get a wider perspective (e.g. human factors as Debra suggested).
  
  Thanks!

• A reply on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 15 2011: Well, wireless technology is slowly being incorporated into the healthcare environment. From what I've seen, wireless patient monitoring is on the rise (e.g. philips intellivue system). Of course, there are tons of physiological monitoring apps available for our smart phones but it hasn't gain too much momentum due to privacy and standardization concerns.
  
  Regardless, I think mobile healthcare communication is inevitable and eventually, patients will be able to communicate about their chest pain or suspicious lesion with their physicians over their phones.
  
  One topic that I'm particularly interested in is wireless monitoring of not only patients but various other parameters within any healthcare environment from patient traffic to equipment locations, infection risk level all with respect to time, location and responsible personnel. This will be an interesting way to measure general hospital quality.
  
  If you don't mind, can I ask why you're interested? I see that you're working for GSK which is predominantly a drug company? Are there plans to incorporate wireless technologies into our pills?

• A comment on Conversation: What is the future of healthcare? How can it become health care vs sickness treatment? What role do technology and innovation play?

  Oct 15 2011: I can't really comment on the state of healthcare in England but we are definitely struggling to find a solution here in the US. It is obviously a multifaceted problem involving policy makers, private medical device/drug industries, clinicians and the patients!
  
  Policy Makers: Thanks to innovation in medicine/technology, most people now die of chronic diseases as they age. This is very different from acute care and requires an long-term doctor to patient relationship. This is just not possible with myriad of private insurance companies. Moreover, our insurance provider is ultimately determined by our employers. So, without sounding too socialistic, there is a need for a centralized healthcare system so that patient information can be easily accessed by the primary care physicians REGARDLESS of where the patient is.
  
  Drug Companies: Instead of focusing on developmental research ( to extend patent period), drug companies should worry less about profit and invest more in diversifying their target diseases. For instance, developing a drug to treat a small population of patients might not be profitable but it is certainly necessary (government should also subsidize these research).
  
  Clinicians: Patients from an area with more specialists per capita are more likely to be subjected to invasive and expensive procedures. There has been an overwhelming push to churn out primary care physicians but without success simply because it is not profitable. Bach and Kocher have proposed an interesting solution that would effectively make medical school free for primary care physicians and specialists would still have to pay for training.
  
  Patients: An an age when information is readily available, patients have an responsibly to monitor their own well being and conditions. From a cultural perspective, there is a need to promote a healthier lifestyle.
  
  technology: promote more transparency between patient and their information/physicians. (i'm out of characters)