Technology can play a very important role in improving healthcare services, while contributing to decrease its costs.

Rui Prior, Miguel Coimbra and Pedro Brandão, all from IT in Porto, have developed the Health Kiosk, a self-check clinical unit that allows patients to measure autonomously some of their vital signs (weight, blood pressure and oximetry) prior to a consultation or on a routine basis.

The Health Kiosk comprises an all-in-one PC that connects via Bluetooth to a blood pressure meter, a scale and an oximeter. The PC monitor works as a touch screen, which means that all the user interaction is done by touching and using the medical devices. The system runs a software with video, text and audio that guides the user to perform the tests. After collecting the vital signs from the medical devices, the kiosk prints them to the clinician and transfers the data to a local or remote DB for storage. According to Pedro Brandão, “the kiosk is intended to be modular. The software should be easily managed in order to adapt to the different scenarios with the use of different devices”.

The system was already tested, with a particular focus on the user's experience and interaction with the kiosk. Also, the research team is already working to improve the software´s manageability and adaptiveness to different situations, and working as well on other improvements and upgrades, like the possibility of using video-conference with a back-office that would help users exploring the kiosk. As Rui Prior says “Health Kiosks may become the ATM´s of primary healthcare”.

To see how the Health Kiosk works please use the following link: