Mobile App Color Matching for Healthcare Diagnostics
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Color perception variability due to vision deficiencies and environmental factors poses a risk to patient safety in healthcare settings, where many healthcare providers are untested for color deficiencies and unaware of their limitations.
Innovation Solution
A method using a mobile electronic device with a camera to capture images, compare them to a database, and display corresponding results, allowing for color evaluation assistance by automatically matching pixel colors and providing indications of patient conditions, with options for local or remote processing and database storage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If healthcare practitioners rely on manual color evaluation, then the process is simple and quick, but color discrimination accuracy is compromised due to vision deficiencies and environmental factors
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a mobile device with camera and processing software as an intermediary between the healthcare practitioner and the color evaluation task. The device captures images of medical indicators (such as urine test strips or skin conditions), automatically analyzes color values through image processing algorithms, and compares them against reference databases. This intermediary system eliminates the need for practitioners to directly assess colors with their eyes, thereby compensating for color vision deficiencies and environmental lighting variations while maintaining operational simplicity for the user.
2Reliability
If color evaluation is performed without technological assistance, then the system remains simple and accessible, but patient safety is compromised due to undetected color deficiencies
Solution Approach 1:
The mobile device application performs self-service by automatically capturing images, processing color data, comparing results against reference values, and generating diagnostic recommendations without requiring the practitioner to have specialized color evaluation training or awareness of their own vision limitations. The system serves itself by incorporating all necessary computational resources, databases, and analysis algorithms within the mobile device, eliminating the need for external expert systems while enhancing patient safety through consistent, objective color assessment.
3Measurement precision
If manual color assessment is used, then no additional equipment is needed, but color perception variability affects diagnostic accuracy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical/optical system of human eye perception with an electronic imaging and processing system. The mobile device camera captures precise color data from medical indicators, and software algorithms objectively analyze and compare these colors against reference databases. This substitution eliminates the variability inherent in human color perception while keeping the operation simple—practitioners only need to capture an image and receive automated results, maintaining ease of operation despite the sophisticated underlying technology.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for assisting a health care practitioner in color evaluation includes maintaining, in a database, a plurality of images each corresponding to a particular result or condition; capturing, by a healthcare practitioner using a camera of a mobile electronic device, a subject image of a patient or an object associated with the patient; automatically comparing, utilizing one or more electronic processors, the captured subject image to images maintained in the database, such comparison including comparing one or more colors in the subject image to one or more colors in the images maintained in the database; automatically determining, based on the automatic comparison, that the captured subject image is positively matched to one or more of the plurality of images maintained in the database; and displaying an indication of the particular result or condition corresponding to each of the positively matched plurality of images.