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University of the Philippines Team Wins 2008 Duke's Choice Award
University of the Philippines computer science students have won an international award for a Java program that enables doctors in rural areas to access a database of common poisons using their mobile phones. Diana Bandojo, Ma. Jaymee Gatapia and Reggie Santos were named winners in the medical solutions category of the Duke’s Choice Award, an annual search for innovative programs running on the Java platform.
Team Jaredy from the Telehealth Group from the Computer Vision and Machine Intelligence Group of the University of the Philippines in Diliman wins award for a clinical decision support system (CDSS) for the diagnosis and management of poisoning
Sun Microsystems, which sponsors the annual event, also announced winners in 10 other categories. Winners were selected by a team led by James Gosling, the inventor of Java language, and announced during the JavaOne conference, the biggest Java technology event.
The winning entry from the Philippines, ESP, uses a database of common poisons and a rules-based approach to assess the poisoning case and make recommendations.
The team’s technical paper says the ESP prototype has been validated in 50 test cases. Their proposal for the project noted that the doctor-to-patient ratio in the Philippines was only 1:80,000 as of 2005, comparing poorly with the 1:20,000 ratio recommended by the World Health Organization. Doctors and health workers in rural areas lack access to information readily available from experts in cities. An electronic device that can provide expert information will help the doctor make the best decisions, especially in cases of poisoning where time is a critical factor, the UP students said.
Bandojo, Gatapia and Santos are students from Computer Vision and Machine Intelligence Group. Their advisers for the project were professor Prospero Naval and instructor Riza Theresa Batista, both of the Department of Computer Science, and Dr. Alvin Marcelo of the National Telehealth Center of UP Manila. Gatapia, in an e-mail interview, said the victory was the first for Filipinos in the competition. He said that the award came as a surprise because they did not develop the program with any contest in mind.
The winners acknowledged Dr. N. Panganiban and Dr. L. Cortes-Maramba, authors of the book “National Poison Control Center,” which was a primary source of information. “We are also grateful to the nurses of the Philippine General Hospital for patiently answering our endless queries,” the team said in their paper.
Source: Manila Standard Today online news
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A clinical decision support system (CDSS) tries to come up with a diagnosis and suggests recommendations in a short length of time depending on some patient's data, in our case, ingested substances, signs and symptoms related to poisoning. Applying CDSS on poisoning domain can compensate the lack of competent human resources and resource-intensive centers for poisoning in the Philippines.
The implementation of this system would extend the reach of the medical experts even to the under-served regions. The project will be implemented as a rule-based expert system that would be built primarily with a knowledge base and an inferencing engine.
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Each year, the Duke's Choice awards committee invites Java community members to nominate the best and most innovative use of Java technology for recognition. The Java technology leadership team -- including James Gosling, known as the father of Java technology -- selects the winners based on the creativity of the Java technology-based applications and services. Now in its sixth year, the committee recognizes the winners of the 2008 Duke's Choice awards for their cool tools, technologies, and products.
