H.E.I.F.E.R Glasses
How Smart Glasses Can Save Lives Globally.
A HEIFER Glasses prototype
Costly HEIFERS
In order to solve the issue of cost when it comes to smart glasses for non-profits and more specifically, Doctors Without Borders, a solution must be put into place that meets three criteria: High return on investment, reasonably priced, and focused. High return on investment essentially means that we need this product to contribute as much profit as possible to Doctors Without Borders so that it will be worth the cost. Our organization will see this profit in increased efficiency and patient care as opposed to actual monetary profit. Reasonably priced is much more straightforward and means exactly what it says. Any smart glasses used by Doctors Without Borders must be reasonably priced so that they can be obtained in mass quantities and easily replaced if necessary. Without a low initial cost, there can be no hope of having a high return on investment because the investment would simply be too great. We know that this low cost is possible because of companies like Emopulse, which as of two years ago designed a clip-on smart glass attachment for only $25. Additionally, GIGAOM, a market researcher projects that by the time currently $1,500 Google Glasses become available to the masses, they should only cost around $299, a fraction of the price. And finally, focused. A product that Doctors Without Borders employs must not be cluttered with useless features for the organization like google maps. It must be a focused product that serves two possible purposes. These purposes are voice to text services for those that are hearing impaired and data input & output as well as communication services over voice for doctors.
In reality this solution will be called HEIFERs or Hearing & Efficiency Improved For Everyone Right-Now glasses. These glasses would support all the features necessary to improve the efficiency of doctors and those that have hearing issues without needless extras all while maintaining a low, cost-effective price. In practice, you might see a doctor prescribe a child a malaria drug without having to leave the room to enter any information into a computer. In addition, if the patient was hard of hearing, they would be able to easily use a pair of glasses to “voice-to-text” the instructions so that they could read them as the doctor spoke.
These glasses have incredible potential for Doctors Without Borders. By ensuring that the glasses maintain a high return on investment and stay cheap and focused, HEIFERs can be exactly what the non-profit needs.
Hearing with HEIFERs
You, Doctors Without Borders, are known worldwide for your provided medical aid in over 60 countries each year. From countries in Africa to Sri Lanka, you have played a huge role in saving thousands of lives from endemic diseases. However, there is more you can do to help others around the world. From a perspective of a hearing-impaired person, I recommend you to buy the Hearing & Efficiently Improved For Everyone Right-Now glasses, also known as HEIFER’s for the hard-of-hearing worldwide.
Growing up I’ve experienced frustration when I can’t hear the joke everyone else is guffawing over, when, after repeated tries, I just can’t catch that exasperated person’s question and can’t fake my way around it; when extended family members give up and say, “Oh never mind” after trying 3 times to me something unimportant. The list goes on and on. Now according to the accurate definition on Web MD, hearing impairment is a hearing loss that prevents a person from totally receiving sounds through the ear. Also, Google+ Research page points out that 90% of deaf children are born to parents who aren’t hearing impaired, which obviously leads to communication barriers. These glasses, however, provide a speech-to-text subtitles that picks up people’s voices and translates them into text onto the glasses. Those who are hearing impaired are currently sitting in class, frustrated for not understanding the professor or probably faking a conversation with someone new they just met. However now, with these provided glasses they can now have a much easier time listening to others and will probably never have trouble ever again. These glasses have a 100% guarantee on subtitles and picks up others’ voices from various distances and sound levels. The transcript on the glasses are also a second or two apart after it has been said, so a conversation or a lecture would not be lagged. This device has been inspired and evolved by several other devices such as Siri on the iPhone and the microphone that picks up sounds on YouTube videos and translates them into subtitles.
Since the HEIFER’s glasses are costly, and many people in the developing countries are unable to afford such a luxury, we recommend you to play a bigger role in achieving their dream by providing these devices. Help a kid be able to make small talk and make new friends, or help that engineering student get that A in his physics class. Whether it’s their social life, education, or work, you will be allowing them an easier day-to-day life.
Be in their shoes--Imagine how it feels to go to the most highly-anticipated movie of the summer just to leave the theater and realize you did not understand more than half of the dialogues that were being said. Your friends continue to guffaw on all the ‘cool’ parts on the ride home from the theater, and you find yourself reading the entire plot by looking it up on the internet on your phone. Give those around the world an equal right as those who are not hearing impaired. Maybe someone who is hearing impaired is a better fit for a job, and the only thing getting in the way is going through the job interview without any communication problems. We ensure you you will be happy with your decision on getting this device. A researcher in medicine, Dr. Lin states: “One in eight people in the United States (13 percent, or 30 million) aged 12 years or older has hearing loss in both ears, based on standard hearing examinations”--Be in their shoes--Imagine how they would feel.HEIFER Communication
Heifer smart glasses help the hearing impaired and enhances communication in a globally evolving world. These glasses are the new technology, which enable people around the world to communicate effortlessly. Heifers allow your doctors to communicate and understand patients’ needs more efficiently.
Doctors in your organization travel to over 60 countries, responding immediately to crises of all kinds. These doctors are dedicated to people in need, and the technology available should be advanced enough to allow them to overcome any language barriers (Doctors Without Borders). High tech smart glasses were used in July 2015 at the Avignon Festival in France to allow translation of a movie premiere into multiple languages. According to Theatre in Paris, “…they know they will not understand a word. So when we equip them with the glasses, it’s pretty cool because they have something they can follow” (Hutchison). Orthopedic surgeon, Tyler Smith, M.D., reports he is able to spend more focused time with patients, because the smart glasses are recording his interactions, freeing up more of his day to see patients instead of being limited to paperwork (Rabinowitz).
In order for Heifers to benefit Doctors Without Borders, the technology must be up to date with current advancements, all doctors within the organization must have training and access to the Heifer smart glasses, and patients will be informed that the use of Heifer Glasses follows HIPAA guidelines. Heifer’s solution is to provide all doctors within the organization with the smart glasses and sufficient training in how to use them effectively.
To prevent lag time or errors in translation, the Heifer glasses will be technologically current. Speech recognition technology will be able to distinguish different voices with ease (Schweizer). With advancements in technology, it is critical that doctors have up-to-date knowledge of how to use Heifers. The education and training for users of Smart Glasses is in-depth and requires the viewing of multiple videos and images of live procedures (Torres). In order to protect patients, all users of the Heifer Glasses will follow ethical standards of HIPAA guidelines. Once the patients realize that the doctor is trying to help them more quickly through direct communication, they will be more comfortable with the technology.
This will benefit all future doctors, because they can communicate with foreign patients directly. The direct communication gives the patient greater security during a crisis. Your need for doctors who speak specific languages is critical to patient care, but with Heifers, all doctors will be able to help patients without translation barriers. Without this technology, you are limited to finding doctors with foreign language skills.
Our goal is to improve the communication between patients and doctors around the world. As the leaders of Doctors Without Borders, the decision about Heifers is now in your hands. This technology has proven itself in other medical applications, and can make a positive impact in your organization. Heifer Smart glasses have the potential to help Doctors Without Borders to exceed the outstanding work that the organization is already doing.
HEIFERs and the Web
Not only will the HEIFER glasses breakdown an important langue barrier but they will also provide a much needed quick access to the web in the field and in cases of disaster. Just think about a doctor in an area far away from a hospital or even in the event of a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. These glass can give doctors access to medical data bases and have the ability to live video stream. With HEIFER technology the doctor can look up patient records, consult with another doctor via video stream or even look up known diseases in the area. Smart glasses technology is begin to take place here in the United States. A leading magazine in the medical industry, The Providence Journal, features a story on how an emergency room in Rhode Island is starting to utilize smart glasses by equipping the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) technicians with a pair so that doctors can begin diagnosing patients before even they even arrive to the hospital. A local physician by the name of Dr. Greg Staggs has volunteered his talents with Doctors Without Borders. We ask Dr. Staggs what his opinion of HEIFER glasses in the field. Dr. Staggs sated that he felt that HEIFER glasses could make a huge impact on the quality of care that Doctors Without Borders can provide to developing countries.
As stated earlier these glasses would provide doctors with access to medical data bases and have the ability to conduct live stream consults. Our proposition is to provide Doctors Without Borders with these HEIFER glasses but in order to able to utilize this technology the cost issues will have to be addressed head on just as Clayton mentioned earlier. Another issue that could arise would be connection interference between databases and other glasses but the majority of that could be solved with strong satellite connection. The access to medical databases could provide physicians with information about a patient’s medical history or even known diagnosis in the area. An example of data base would be the Clinical Evidence from the BMJ Evidence Centre that contains medical research from around the world and even categorizes some cases by symptoms in certain terrains. Another great asset that can provide the next level of care would be live video streaming. This capability can have multiple doctors involved and even specialist whether they are in the same camp or even in a different county. Coped with database information and have the capability to conduct live video stream consults, the increase in quality patient care is limitless.
Imagine being in a foreign country for an event and in the middle of your event a terrorist attack happens, wouldn’t you want doctors to have technology to help you and everyone around you as fast as possible? By adopting this technology it could increase the number of lives saved daily and provide a new way to be involved without ever leaving the states.HEIFER Efficiency
One of the big aspects of technology in today’s world that companies and organizations continue to focus on is its ability to optimize time and resources while still getting a necessary job done. It is because of this that I would like to formally recommend the user of HEIFER glasses to the organization Doctors Without Borders to help further their cause of helping those who need medical attention in third world countries. This recommendation is for many reasons primarily including that the use of HEIFER smart glasses can be a useful tool to provide to those with hearing disorders as well as help optimize the organizational structure by providing practicing medical professionals with a quicker and easier way to document and process data from their many medical procedures and examinations. In an article by Garter, one of the world’s leading technology research and advisory companies, they state that smart glasses will revolutionize industry as a whole as early as 2017 and that it will bring huge improvements to the medical industry.
The main way that HEIFER glasses can help optimize Doctors Without Borders is that it provides the ability to easily store and access records and information. This is very beneficial because as shown on the Doctors Without Borders website, the majority of cases that they see consist of Infected wounds, Burns, tuberculosis, and other respiratory infections. These cases make up over 50% of the cases seen by Doctors Without Borders thus having technology that can store information on symptoms and previous treatments for similar cases would be incredibly helpful and would allow the doctors to more quickly diagnose and begin to treat patients. The use of the glasses as a database will also help to lower the overhead cost of Doctors Without Borders operations in third world countries. From their website it is seen the Doctors Without Borders pays their medical professionals $1,731 per month and more per month if the person has greater medical experience or training. HEIFER glasses can be used to lower this cost because the glasses can store information on how to perform more advanced medical procedures and allow less trained members to perform some of the same procedures that it would normally take a more highly trained professional to do.
Finally HEIFER glasses can help to optimize the operations of Doctors Without Borders by reducing the amount of time required to meet with and diagnose patients. A study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information states that the average visit to the doctor takes about 16 minutes and up to a third of that time is wasted by the doctor having to gather the patient records and other assorted paperwork. Smart glasses similarly to helping document past cases of an illness can help to pull previous medical records to expedite the process of examining and treating a patient. By reducing this waste of time Doctors without borders can realistically increase their productivity by 33% and be able to see more patients in the same amount of time thus helping them to further their goals of helping as many people as possible overseas.
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