Key result
A systematic review of contactless optical patient diagnosis identified only five eligible studies, revealing high methodological heterogeneity and a significant research gap in the field.
Why the study?
Manual contact-based vital sign monitoring consumes significant medical personnel workload amid staff shortages, prompting the need to analyze contactless optical methods that combine monitoring with automated diagnosis.
What is the state of the art in contactless optical patient diagnosis methods?
Systematic Review (n=5)
What is the state of the art in contactless optical patient diagnosis methods?
There is a significant research gap in the field of contactless optical patient diagnosis, with only five studies currently incorporating automated diagnostic reasoning.
Contactless vital sign monitoring may ease staff workload and burnout; Level 4 data leave accuracy and safety questions open for routine use.
Many countries around the world face a shortage of medical personnel, leading to work overload or even burnout. This calls for political and scientific solutions to relieve the medical personnel. The measurement of vital signs in hospitals is still predominately carried out manually with traditional contact-based methods, taking over a substantial share of the medical personnel's workload. The introduction of contactless methods for vital sign monitoring (e.g., with a camera) has great potential to relieve the medical personnel. This systematic review's objective is to analyze the state of the art in the field of contactless optical patient diagnosis. This review distinguishes itself from already existing reviews by considering studies that do not only propose the contactless measurement of vital signs but also include an automatic diagnosis of the patient's condition. This means that the included studies incorporate the physician's reasoning and evaluation of vital signs into their algorithms, allowing an automated patient diagnosis. The literature screening of two independent reviewers resulted in a total of five eligible studies. The highest number of studies (three) introduce methods for the risk assessment of infectious diseases, one study introduces a method for the risk assessment of cardiovascular diseases, and one study introduces a method for the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. Overall, high heterogeneity in relevant study parameters is reported among the included studies. The low number of included studies indicates a large research gap and emphasizes the demand for further research on this emerging topic.
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Alić et al. (2023) conducted a systematic review in Contactless optical patient diagnosis (n=5). Contactless optical patient diagnosis vs. Reference medical devices or physician diagnosis was evaluated on Diagnostic accuracy. A systematic review of contactless optical patient diagnosis identified only five eligible studies, revealing high methodological heterogeneity and a significant research gap in the field.
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