Sri Lanka’s 1st Fully Wireless Medical Image Delivery and Investigation Workstation System
<<<<— — — Project Discontinued on 9th May 2021 — — — →>>>>>>>
This is the Modified English translation of my previous Sinhalese Medium article @ https://link.medium.com/z5tZNSyvK8
Introduction for Non Sri Lankan Readers
Sri Lanka has a free and universal health care system. It scores higher than the regional average. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Sri_Lanka)
This article is about my efforts on helping a government hospital in Sri Lanka by making their X-Ray and Medical Image Delivery totally wireless.
The Problem
Gampaha District General Hospital in Sri Lanka had an issue with delivering X-Ray Prints due to out of stocks of its printing films. As a solution, Radiology Department of the Hospital had to write all X-Ray Images to CD (Compact Disks) and send those to be viewed via Deskops and Laptops resides at Wards.
That approach worked for sometime, but after sometime they started having issues with opening those CD’s due to damaged CD-ROM Drives and the free software provided on the Machines are not capable of doing Zooming / Pan /Color Corrections and etc.
There were 6 workstations with commercial software which is costing 150,000 LKR Per Workstation + Cabling + Labor. But that one also not capable on providing the all required features for Orthopedic Doctors and others.
Note: Having X-Ray/Medical Images on CDs are more economical than printing it on films. 1 X-Ray Film costs 300 LKR to Hospital where 1 CD costs around 20 LKR and can be used to store multiple images.
Unlike having the physical printed film, it is kind of not practical to do side by side comparison with patient with an image displays on a Desktop / Laptop Machine. So some of ward doctors used to take photos of the displayed image on the Desktop and show it to the consultant during the ward-rounds.
The Solution
Orthopedic Consultant Dr. Thushara De Almeida (One of the two doctors behind the seen at https://www.dialog.lk/dialog-axiata-gifts-fully-functional-icu-at-negombo-general-hospital-to-the-public) who recently got a transfer to Gampaha District General Hospital, contacted me back in end of June 2020 and explained me about the difficulties they are having with the investigations.
On 17th July 2020 He sent me some images on existing commercial system and I started doing my research on developing an alternative to replace commercial system with a Free and OpenSource one.
By 26th of July 2020 I was able to create a replacement for image archival and I visited hospital on 28th and Installed 4 External Antenna Based Fixed Broadband Connections (Blocked Internet) to enable communication initial between 4 locations as doing network cabling going to be too costly and have to self managed but with Broadband you can get the support from ISP.
Have to thank Mr. Pradeep De Almeida (CXO — Group Chief Technology Officer, Dialog Axiata) and his team for the support and initial setup cost (~16000 LKR). And I will be baring the entire cost of initial connectivity as far as the system runs.
Radiographer Mrs. Deepika and Chief Radiographer Mr. Kapila helped me extensively during initial configurations and educating me on the old system. At around 8 PM on 28th of July 2020 we were able to finish the configuration on Image Archival System made it up and running.
Meanwhile I told about this project to the Committee or DevOps Sri Lanka Community (DevOps.lk) and requested their support on buying Tablets to install mobile workstation system while still providing the Desktop application for X-Ray investigations. And I am so proud about they way they responded and then we were able to buy 2 brand new Samsung Tab A 10.1 units with the initial launch of the system.
Official Go Live
On 3rd August 2020 (Poya Day) Gampaha General Hospital Started using my system for 3 wards Desktops and via 2 Tablets which were donated by DevOps.lk Team.
About the System
This system is capable with archiving / displaying and Managing medical images received from X-Ray / CT and other systems which complies with https://www.dicomstandard.org/ standards.
System Architecture Diagrams and Technical Data cannot be exposed to public due to healthcare industry related regulations. I worked for a US Medical Project back in 2011–2014 and I learned about the criticality about the heath records data and regulations like HIPAA.
This system costs 0 LKR for Sri Lankan Government and to the Hospital and all the hosting cost / initial link costs will be bared by myself and I am committed to continue this as far as the system being used at the hospital.
Total Saving for Sri Lankan government and Hospital as of 8/9/2020
We have enabled system on 5 units (3 x Desktops and 3x Tabs) so without the labor and cabling charges on commercial system.
Saved 150,000 x 6= 900,000 LKR
How to Support
You can support this project by directly or via me by providing following to the hospital
- Provide Fixed WIFI to remaining wards and pay for the monthly bill (900LK + Tax per month) — This is the 1st Priority
- Providing Tablets — Should be 10.1 inch and runs on Android (Tested Tables Dialog TabPro 10.1, Samsung Tab A 10.1) — This is the 2nd Priority
Financial Transparency
All transactions will be updated on following google sheet upon the manual validation with the hospital.
That’s it :-) Thank you for reading
