A USD $25 computer, the size of a credit card, operating on Linux that is capable of running Quake 3 (I played this game many moons ago and I absolutely loved it), can you imagine the impact it will have on ehealth and computer based medical devices (think Holters, Ultrasound and the myriad of devices out there) for resource stripped settings (think Africa and many parts of South East Asia).
The initiative is from Raspberry Pi Foundation (http://www.raspberrypi.org/) and I personally think it will be big as the potential are limited to your own imagination.
Business Insiders ran an article on the initiative, if you are interested, the article is available here
According to the information and discussion provided on Raspberry Pi Foundation’s website and forum, the computer has a USB port (you can connect most of your devices here, be it a keyboard, mouse or what have you), a HDMI, a RCA video output (monitor devices), Ethernet jack (there are a few version of the computer and at one of them has it), Audio Jack and SD card interface plus the ability to solder a camera on. (Apparently, you can even mount a touch screen panel on).
Most importantly, it runs off 4 AA batteries, this means goodbye to power shortage / instability in low resource settings! This means mobility! and mobility + stable power means a game changer to mhealth, telehealth etc (the wireless option is slotted in future release).
The low cost means one up for motivation to adopt eHealth because the operational and clinical benefits (of a proper implementation) have already been proven. imagine low cost ‘tele-anything’ for both monitoring and basic diagnosis!
Excited? Well I sure am and I personally wish Raspberry Pi Foundation the absolute best as the final product should be ready for sale in 2012.
This my friends, is a game changer to many discipline but I believe it will become a life saver for many when the healthcare industry adopts it.
BinaryHealthCare (BNHC) 