Arachnet Project
What is Arachnet Project?
Arachnet Project z.s. is an non-profit association which develop the BlindPhysio application based on Machine Learning and Deep Learning principles.
The apllication should serve as an medical diagnostic tool for massage therapists and the visually impaired massage therapists in the first place.
Who are the users of Arachnet?
We want the application to be used by massage therapists.
He/she - the massage therapist enters the symptoms and signs collected from a person seeking care
The information about the signs and symptoms are obtained from:
- the patient himself, his medical history, his actual problems, his occupation, hobbies, age etc.
- the massage therapist, his observation and physical examination, which he/she can performs by palpation of the patient's body.
After the massage therapist has entered all of the collected information to the application, the application should output the specific medical diagnosis for the patient.
This diagnosis will be determined by a trained Machine Learning model (learning or training of the model will be carried out on a statistically relevant sample of the real medical data).
We want to design the user interface as an web based blind-friendly application which will be adapted to mobile devices.
Why we have decided to work on this type of application?
Making a diagnosis is crucial step in process of the treating any disease.
The Institute of Medicine at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine(USA) reports that “diagnostic errors contribute to approximately 10 percent of patient deaths,” and also account for 6 to 17 percent of hospital complications.
The cause of diagnostics errors are due to a variety of factors including:
- Inefficient collaboration and integration of health information technologies (Health IT)
- Gaps in communication among clinicians, patients and their families
- A healthcare work system which, by design, does not adequately support the diagnostic process
To address these challenges many researchers and companies are leveraging artificial intelligence to improve medical diagnostics.
We would like to be one of this companies and take a part in this developing industry and offer the possibilities and advantages of this cutting edge and modern technology also to the one of the undeserved community the visually impaired massage therapists.
And we would like to help the community that is spread all over the world, people who are struggling with musculoskeletal problems.
In real world, the massage therapist is often the only health professional with whom the client/patient will come into a contact and who provide care.
And that is why we think our application can help. The therapist has no colleagues, no experts, no specialized teams or special equipments, that are available in big hospitals. In the therapist's studio there is just the therapist and the client who came to ask for help.
Arachnet BlindPhysio can serve as a tool to confirm the findings of the therapist and it can highlight special cases when massage therapy can be in contradictionn of the patient's disease (oncological disorders). In this case a visit to a doctor is a must.
The application is neither supposed to be a substitute for a therapist's knowledges and skills. On the contrary he/she will be required to correctly and accurately identify the problems and perform precise observation of the patient's body and identify the living conditions of the patient which can have an influence on the problems presented.
The massage therapist will be using a modern technology of today's world and his work will be probably better appreciated in every sence.
And probably it will him give a sense of inner satisfaction, new opportunities, possibilities and challenges to his work.
And what about clients of the massage therapists?
Diseases of the Musculoskeletal system are of the most serious problems of the world and Europe as well.
There are the historical reasons of that, the structure of the human body is based of the body structure of quadrupeds and probably is not suitable for the way of living of modern society. We are sure your cat has far fewer spinal problems than you do and its movements and gait are more graceful and elegant..
The quality of life of people who struggle with pmusculoskeletal system diseases and disorder is reduced, as for their physical and even mental condition.
Massage therapy can be a part of the treatment of the affected persons. It reduces pain and stress as well and this type of therapy probably helps.
Why probably. We believe that this part of medicine is underestimated despite of the severity and epidemiology of musculoskeletal disorders. The story of musculoskeletal disorders is unfortunately not one of the great stories of medicine and thus they are not the center of extensive research as they deserve to be.
And therefore there is a shortage of doctors and even professional interests in this area.
That is why the clients of massage therapists do not visit doctors. In the Czech republic (and also in the other countries of the Europe and in the USA) persons with musculoskeletal problems probably have to wait for several weeks or even months to get an appoitment with a specialist.
We think the types of applications or equipments similar we would like to work on could help to improve the situations in this field of medicine. The situation in the meaning of care and treatement of the affected persons and also in research into causes and treatements.
Our applications will use a great amount of data and they can be used for statistical, scientific and research purposes.
