1. Batumi – October 2018 Prof. Massimo Boaron FEMTEC Technical Commission
Balneology Impact of the Emerging Digital Technologies in the Balneology activities
Batumi – October 2018
Prof. Massimo Boaron
FEMTEC Technical Commission

2. Why new IT technologies ?
Why we should be so interested
in IT technology ?
Not simply because of smart technologies to be proud of, like our last model of smartphones! Our goals are:
a Effective services
a Lower costs
There are many emerging IT technologies helping to do that. The real problem is …
there are more technologies
than people able to exploit them!

3. Emerging IT applications in Balneology
Today the Information Technology has a huge impact in all activities.
But if we search “IT technologies in Balneology” the Google result is nearly NOTHING!
What does it mean?
Are IT applications in Balneology not interesting?
NO! It’s just a …
lack of innovation in Balneology!

4. The three souls of the Balneology
Now let’s see the 3 core components of the Balneology:
Health
Wellness
Tourism
In these fields
we can find out
many advanced
applications!
Wellness
Tourism
Health

5. IT opens new opportunities
The new IT applications in the medical sector are:
User-friendly and less invasive a lower skills
Cost effective a important savings
So IT gives the opportunity for proposing new and better medical services.
But that requires:
New Communication/Marketing strategies e.g. chatbots and “smart” CRM system
New business models with new services
e.g. preventive medical care
More services = more visibility & more business

6. The main ITC technologies for new services
These technologies offer new smart and profitable services to the Health, Wellness & Tourism sectors.
Let’s see some examples.
Robotics
IoT
Internet
of Things
Big
Data
Virtual &
Augmented
Reality
Artificial
Intelligence
Natural
Language

7. Robotics, VR and AI for rehabilitation
Hunova - Robotic support for orthopedic, neurological, geriatric rehabilitation. Physician predefines the movements, sensors read and control force and position.
Niurion = VR interactive scenarios with videogame-like exercises.
Wearable inertial sensors capture the body movements interacting with virtual objects.
VR involves the patient to follow therapeutic path and its AI based software evaluates the results.

8. Niurion VR scenarios

9. 3D & AR applications to wellness
Naked captures 3D images of the patient’s body, using the Intel scanning technology.
It tracks the trend of weight and volumetric body fat during the wellness care period.

10. 2a - IoT hand held devices
IoT applications are based on:
sensors collecting physical data and
local or remote processing and storing units
Hand held, wearable and internal IoT devices support new monitoring and analysis applications.
An hand held simple solutions is AdhereTech a pill bottle that reminds patients to take their pills.
A very advanced device is Gene-Radar: it analyzes body fluids to detect DNA genetic fingerprints of biological organisms: in less than 1 hour makes analysis that usually require many days.

11. 2b - IoT wearable devices
Devices embedded in glasses, watches, jewels, rings, bands, patches to get and share body parameters with physicians in real time: ECG, temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, activity, skin data (hydration, dryness, redness, melanin), … Examples: Qardio Core, Motiv, Mio Slice, S-Skin.

12. 2c - IoT internal devices
Proteus - An ingestible chip controls taking drugs at due time and tracks the drug effects. A patch gets the chip data and transmits them to a tablet.
PillCam – A micro-camera allows upper endoscopy or colonoscopy. Present goals: improving the power source to make it smaller and increase the working life inside the body.

13. 2d - IoT under skin devices
Miniaturized units can be implanted under-skin:
To release drugs over long periods of time.
To control heart disorders sending data to doctor for up to 5 years without affecting the user life.
To detect tumour cells (CTCs) or infections (malaria, ebola, ...) at an early stage: these applications are based on liquid biopsy chips with antibodies attached to carbon nanotubes

14. 3 - AI and Big Data
AI applications are replacing many human activities including learning, reasoning, planning, problem solving, perception, mobility, manipulation, etc.
Their training can be based both on big-data or real world interaction (like humans).
AI performs better than humans in:
Analysing very quickly huge data sets, like images, sounds, videos, trends, etc.
Detecting patterns where we can see only noise
Managing digital sensors and systems
AI applied to medical activities improves security, diagnostic results, and care effectiveness.

15. Possible AI applications to Balneology
AI = time saving, lowers costs, better services
CRM and Marketing systems (OTA like)
Organisation support: optimizing resource exploitation, patients’ data management, …
Diagnoses support, data and images analysis to identify critical situations (body postures, skin diseases, body parameters, ...)
Care planning support, suggesting physical exercises, best thermal locations, diets for aesthetic or health problems, …
Specific applications on clinical investigations, e.g. well-being of thermal clusters populations surveys on climate-health relationship, …

16. AI examples in the Medical Field
IBM Watson was trained with huge image archives to detect tumours and heart diseases.
A Stanford University AI application improves healthcare support, detecting critical situations of seniors living alone.
Babylon (UK), a disease prevention and diagnosis service with ( users): it gets symptoms from patients’ voice, identify the illness using their medical data and its DB, and suggests what to do.
Molly, a virtual nurse, monitors patient’s chronic illness condition, follows up treatments, and controls remote monitoring devices.
Babylon and Molly user interaction is based on AI+NLP voice understanding technologies.

17. 4 - Natural Language Processing
Chatbots are the main NLP applications: simple apps can give predefined answers, while AI based NLP apps give smart voice and message services.
Chatbots will support over 85% of customer interactions by 2020 (Gartner Group).
They can be very useful in Balneology providing:
Help desk services, i.e. answer to customers’ inquiries, suggest suitable services/locations, …
Medical services: collect patients’ information, make initial screenings, give useful advices, support many repetitive activities, …
Chatbot costs are between $ and $ depending on complexity and smartness.

18. CONCLUSION: A PROPOSAL
Many applications of new IT technologies are just software. Therefore, when developed, they can be cloned without extra costs.
That can suggest a strategic FEMTEC initiative:
to plan and develop common applications, sharing costs among interested members
This approach will result in making available
smart IT applications to all Femtec members
at less than 5% of the real cost !
Thanks for your attention