Visualizing Electronic Health Records With “Google-Earth for the Body”
“IBM researchers develop 3-D visualization tool for electronic health records.
“As you can see,” the doctor was telling me, “the X-rays don’t show any break.” I nodded in agreement, although I couldn’t tell much of anything from the black-and-white image of my badly swollen and severely hyperextended right wrist, which I’d injured during a softball game. The doctor helpfully explained, as he was taping on a splint, that I obviously had injured a couple of somethings in my wrist with Latin-sounding names, but not to worry, it would just take a few weeks to heal up.
While it may not have changed my diagnosis, at that moment I would have appreciated a nice diagram of the bones, tendons, muscles, and blood vessels of my wrist showing me exactly what I had injured, along with an explanation of all the medical jargon my doctor used. I would have especially liked having a way of understanding what parts of my body were going to be affected before the several surgeries I have experienced.
Well, my wish might be coming true.”
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Robert N. Charette, IEEE Spectrum Online, January 2008
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