NEWS Vietnam

NCKU Overseas Hub in Vietnam organized the Online Workshop with the topic “2022 Workshop on Application of AI, IoT in Healthcare Management” on June 23^rd, 2022. This Workshop receives many remarkable results as it attracts the attention of people from many different occupations including 52% from Undergraduate Students, 32% from GraduateStudents, 11% from University Staff, 3% from Industry and 2% from Government. The high percentage of the Undergraduate Students and Graduate Students joined the event confirms the prestige of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), NCKU Overseas Hub in Vietnam (NCKU OH) and also the quality of the event.

Participant’s occupation

Firstly, Dr. Minh Hien-Director of NCKU OH introduced the purpose of the Workshop, which is to share the newest knowledge, updated information, as well as the reality of the application of AI, and IoT in healthcare management in Vietnam and Taiwan. The delegating guest Speakers include: Prof. Huynh Quang Linh - Head of Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, HCMUT; Prof. Yi-Chun Du - Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, NCKU; Prof. Shuenn-Yuh Lee - Founder of Your Health Technology (Yutech) Co., Ltd, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, NCKU; Dr. Nguyen Chi Ngoc - Chair of Tele-Medicine & Mobile Healthcare Lab, Faculty of Electrical & Electrical Engineering, HCMUT; and Dr. Nguyen Trung Hau - Faculty of Applied Science, HCMUT have been introduced.

The Group photo

To start the Workshop, an introduction of HCMUT’s IoT & AI research activities was presented by Prof. HuynhQuang Linh. Prof. Linh introduced the overview history, advantages and application of AI and IoT in healthcare service.Prof. Linh focused on the training and research activities of the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering (BME) during the period of isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Implementation of experimental research activities of BME Dept. training program has faced many difficulties for the following reasons: Undergraduate and graduate students cannot come to the laboratory to perform experimental measurements collecting data to evaluate expected projects; Equipment research groups could not build test models due to inability to purchase components and supplies and manufacture prototype devices and Clinical application research groups can not approach hospitals and medical enterprises to collect expected clinical data and process statistics. Therefore, research activities serving projects, graduation theses, student's research programs, etc. have been considerably delayed, affecting the progress towards achieving the training program goals, especially for students in their final years of the training program. Faced with the mentioned situation, the BME Dept had shifted research topics to: (1) Using computational techniques; (2) Using online biomedical databases; (3) Using computational algorithms for improvement for real-time processing of biosignals and images; and (4) Using statistical utilities to evaluation biomedical data. In concluding his presentation, Prof. Linh concluded that despite the difficulties above, the BME Dept. completely match the expected output standards of the biomedical engineering training program and contribute to starting up new research directions, research projects adequately under permissible conditions. He would hope students in BME Dept. have more chances to continuE their study in NCKU and more joint research projects between NCKU and HCMUT establishing in the near future.

Prof. Huynh Quang Linh in the Opening Remark and introduced HCMUT’s IoT & AI research activities.

Continuously, Prof. Yi-Chun Du introduced the topic “Metaverse – The Future Healthcare Management”. From his point of view, the digital technology can solve or improve the long-term problems in the medical-industrial. Prof. Du explained the Metaverse term  wich is the tool that created a simulated virtual world using technology to provide people with the best sensing signals, thereby linking the real and the virtual world. He also clarified the different between Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mix Reality (MR). In detail, VR provides all the virtual images, AR provides the raw image with the digital information and the MR can show the position of the target (in front of, behind, etc.). He also used the 6 videos demo to show the MR research in his group, including: Demo 1: Voice Control; Demo 2: Gesture Recognition and Real-time Control; Demo 3: Object and Merging Reality-Virtual ; Demo 4:  Cutting Test and Bleeding; Demo 5: the Scenario of Surgical Plan; and Demo 6: Other Features of Biomimetic Phantoms. At the end of the speech, Prof. Du concluded: Metaverse has great potential and the technology that can link the virtual and reality is the current key issue; MR technology is a relatively good method to bridge the Phygital world; Prof. Du believe there it will be more and more applications using MR technology in the medical industry such as reducing the rate of diagnostic errors, telemedicine, surgical intelligence, shred medical decision-making, and improving medical quality and experience.

The speech of Prof. Yi-Chun Du with the topic “Metaverse – The Future Healthcare Management”.

The next part is the topic: “Building and Implementation Data Standards Based on HL7-FHIR and DICOM International Standards for Electronic” which was presented by Dr. Nguyen Chi Ngoc. According to Dr. Ngoc, in Vietnam, still uses the paper medical report to record the patient’s information. This method led to several problems in managing the hospital information system. Prof. Ngoc provided the Electrical medical record (EMR) based on the HL7-FHIR and DICOM International standards to manage the patient’s record more efficiently. His research group started the phase 1 by the clarification the XL7 FHIR and DICOM standards; Continuously, studying the state of the medical record according to the regulation of the Ministry of Health and the current state of paper medical records; researching on Snomed CT medical terminology; Standardize of medical discharge summary; Research and test the proposed set of data standards at the laboratory scale; In phase 2, Dr. Ngoc focused on research and test in the laboratory scale, and for the phase two, we research and test in the real hospital. The research has done the Trial at 02 hospitals: Nguyen Tri Phuong hospital (1000 beds) and Thong Nhat hospital (1200 beds).

Dr. Nguyen Chi Ngoc shared to all participants the topic: “Building and Implementation Data Standards Based on HL7-FHIR and DICOM International Standards for Electronic”

Next, Prof. Shuenn-Yuh Lee presented the topic “Wireless Bio-signal Acquisition System and AIOT Platform for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease”. Prof. Lee introduced the achievement of his group in prevention of Cardiovascular disease by using the ECG patch compared to other products in the market. With the advantages of high resolution, convenient, low power, long time monitoring and electric safety the ECG patch is a potential device for heart disease. Prof. Lee also introduced the medical devices that were created by Yutech such as: YuGuard, YuSound, YuRine, especially the YuCloth, YuBelt, and YuPet that showed the convenience in using and acceptable price. Through the presentations, Prof. Lee showed his own case study how to translate the research results to commercialize products and bring the benefit to the customers.

Prof. Shuenn-Yuh Lee enthusiastically shared his speech.

The last presentation is the topic “Gesture Recognition and Its Application in Vietnamese Sign Language Translator” by Dr. Nguyen Trung Hau. He showed the application of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) in recognition of the gestures that the patient needs during their daily life. The gestures in his study include: Drink, Hungry, Happy, Angry, Want to say something, and None. The CNN models showed the high accuracy, almost 100% for the 2-D CNN. Dr. Hau expressed that his group will increase the number of gestures; transfer learning on a mobile device and create the smart gloves with integrated the electric circuit for daily life use.

The speech with the topic “Gesture Recognition and Its Application in Vietnamese Sign Language Translator” was presented by Dr. Nguyen Trung Hau

After the presentation of the speakers was the Q&A part. Prof. Huynh Quang Linh received the questions focused onresearch activities of BME Dept, such as: How do students learn and practice AI or IoT in the Dept; What are the most difficulties of the Lecturer and students when approaching AI and IoT; what methods have the departments done to overcome the difficulties; Prof. Yi-Chun Du had questions related to Metaverse-related issues, for example: Thechallenges of the security of patient data in Metaverse. How to solve this problem; Interoperability is a key component of today’s healthcare paradigm. How to ensure patient interaction in the Metaverse? Dr. Nguyen Chi Ngoc also received a lot of questions from participants who watched on FB Livestream, such as: The amount of data is so tremendous that deriving insights from it is becoming extremely difficult for doctors which ultimately affects the quality of decision-making. This will eventually lead to patient safety issues. What are the solutions for this problem? Prof. Shuenn-Yuh Lee received questions: can the device directly linked with a public patient database for a specific health provider to be able to recollect data to possible personalize their treatment; Would sweating profusely affect its performance; and Has it been considered the possibility of several users of 1 device (renting the device instead of selling it, for patients with low budgets). Dr. Nguyen Trung Hau received the questions from participants: Explain why the 2D-CNN achieved better performance than the others? In Vietnam, in addition to developed places such as HCMC and Ha Noi, in other places, It lacks both material and machinery. How to bring Ai and IoT technology in healthcare closer to such places? In summary,the speakers agreed that AI and IoT will be key technologies in the future of the Healthcare Management field.

Delegated Speakers answered participant’s questions in Panel Discussions

At the end of the Workshop, the panelists hoped that the viewers could have an overview of application AI, IoT in healthcare management. In addition, this Workshop brought some outstanding results: In Cisco Webex, the Workshop had70 participants, the Livestream of the Workshop on FB reached approximately 511 people, 310 views during the live stream and had a sharply dramatic increase. Not only in Vietnam, but this Workshop also attracted international viewers from 10 countries like Taiwan, Canada, Malaysia, Japan, the United States, Philippines, France, Singapore, South Korea, and Estonia. This Workshop becomes an event that provides useful knowledge and updated information for the candidates who are interested in the application of AI, and IoT in healthcare management. The event got the huge media support of the Office of International Affairs NCKU; Dept. of Electrical Engineering, NCKU; Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, NCKU; Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, HCMUT; Faculty of Electrical & Electrical Engineering, HCMUT; Vietnamese Institutions and the sister Hub in Thailand and Malaysia.

The Workshop has attracted International viewers

 The Workshop information has been posted on the official Fan page