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these stakeholders were held to identify aspects of the application such as usability,
flexibility, and privacy, and second to come up with deficiencies of the existing back
pain assessment approach, and identify areas of opportunity for the 3-D tool to possi-
bly exploit.
Similarly, the same interviews were also carried out on people suffering from back
pain conditions, all volunteers from the Rheumatology Clinic of Northwick Park
Hospital, London, and from the U.K. National Forum of Wheelchair User Groups.
Again, the aim of this study was to identify aspects regarding the usability, flexibility,
and privacy of the proposed prototype, this time, however, from a patient's point of
view. In brief, the identified requirements were to:
1.
provide a 3D model of the human body;
2.
provide fully navigational controls enabling the ability to Zoom, Rotate,
Drag for depth perception;
3.
allow individually selectable regions of the body to demonstrate the location
of pain;
4.
use color to represent different types of pain;
5.
allow the details to be saved for later analysis by physician and for record
keeping on a patient's file
6.
provide the patient with the ability to input back pain data ubiquitously and
upload it to a central server
7.
provide a handheld solution for data collection, since many back pain pa-
tients for example, due to associated disabilities, are confined to wheelchair
or beds, and would not have easy access to desktop systems
8.
include personal medical information collection capabilities in the form of a
questionnaire allowing also for pain intensity and factors to be shown
9.
create an easy to use and navigate graphical environment
3.2 Prototype Proposed Architecture
With the user requirements derived, the following approach was identified as the most
suitable solution. Our proposed prototype will combine a 3D representation of a pain
drawing with the possibility for the user to directly navigate and select the type and
location of pain in the 3D representation. In addition, it will provide the capability to
the user to also support the drawing with specific back pain related medical data col-
lection (personal profile, pain factors, pain intensity, etc) in a questionnaire format.
The collected information will then be saved to a backend database for further analy-
sis and preview.
For all these, our system will provide a user-friendly GUI that will support this
behavior by allowing the user to touch and select the information and object of inter-
est using a finger or a pointing device such as the PDA stylus, which is a wireless
device chosen to fulfill our goal of overcoming time, space, and further constraints.
Finally, all the information recorded will be accessible by a clinician regardless
his/her location, as they will be securely uploaded and be available from a server.
3.3 Prototype Building Components
From the above proposed architecture we can safely derive an initial system structure
that consists of 3 main building components: The
User (patient), the Hospital
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