Seeing life through a different lens

My Dad has been a life long camera and photography buff. At different times it has been a real passion of his. Although he had his own ‘dark room’, literally a place to develop and print films, and not anything sinister, throughout his life he embraced new technology. I well remember those early portable video cameras, made portable only because you had some of the technology housed in a machine you hung from your shoulder. He loved taking pictures and was often very creative in terms of camera angles and composition. He created thousands of slides, and friends and family were often ‘treated’ to a slideshow or two. As the technology changed, photos and slides were transposed onto CDs and my Dad’s creativity moved to embracing captions and music. He became quite the digital media maestro.

These days, of course, we are able to produce excellent quality photos, video clips and all manner of digital media simply by using our smartphones. Whilst I didn’t really inherit my Dad’s passion for photography, I do think I inherited his artistic leaning when it comes to capturing moments in ways that often draws favourable comment when I post these online. As for my Dad, well I think he has a secret desire to once again own a camera that uses film so he can return to those days of developing your own prints. Seeing an image appear in those trays of chemicals was quite magical. And not everyone could do that.

Indeed, photos taken with the early cameras all had to be sent away for developing and printing. The Kodak No 1 camera, first sold in 1888, was a simple box camera that came complete with a roll of film. When the film was finished, the entire camera was sent back to the Kodak factory, where it was reloaded with more film and sent back to the customer while the original film was being processed.

We have come a long way since then, but just for a moment, I want to dwell on a camera that appeared on the shelves in 1949. There is, dear reader, a reason for this pause. Back then, a company called Photo-Pac started to sell a single-use cardboard camera. It only took 8 photos, which had to be sent away to be developed. Sadly, the camera never caught on, and the company went out of business. It took until 1986 before the single-use camera made another appearance. Kodak produced a model a year later that became very popular. Their use grew during the 1990s and such cameras were often found on tables at wedding receptions and so on. Indeed, J and I went to a family memorial celebration meal late last year, where each table was given one of these single-use cameras so as to capture the moment. I prefer my smartphone, but if you are tempted, you can still buy these cameras here.

Single-use digital video cameras, despite being readily available, have not really caught on. However, last week I saw one such single-use digital camera in use at my hospital. I had the great privilege to spend some time with Rachel Campbell, one of my colleagues, who is our Irritable Bowel Disorder (IBD) Advanced Clinical Specialist. I had in the week previously formally opened our new endoscopy services with our Chief Executive, Karen James. During that opening ceremony, I was told of our video capsule endoscopy service. Rachel and her team provide this service, and so I arranged to see her.

I didn’t know what to expect, and certainly wasn’t expecting to see how far digital camera technology had come and how it was being applied in healthcare. The ‘capsule’ used in this process is just a little bigger than your average paracetamol capsule. At one end is a tiny digital camera that continuously takes hundreds of pictures as it passes through a person’s body. 

The version I was shown is one that provides an examination of the small bowel. The pictures it takes are transmitted wirelessly to a small recorder that the patient wears around their waist. The camera can take a while to pass through the body, often 5 – 8 hours, and eventually it is passed out in your stool when you go to the toilet. Hence the single-use idea. Each camera costs around £500, which is slightly more than the £22 Kodak version noted above. 

Whilst there is something about the fact that the cameras contribute, in a small way, to our sustainability challenges, it is a great service for patients who either cannot tolerate a more conventional endoscopy or where endoscopy and/or colonoscopy can’t reach the part of the bowel needing to be examined. Our Trust is seeking to develop the service further and to start to use the double camera colon capsule, but we are not quite there yet with this service development.  

And just like the excitement I felt when standing next to my Dad as he developed his photographs all those years ago, I found the images stored on Rachel’s computer of the capsule’s passage through a human body absolutely fascinating. I have never seen inside a human body in this way before*. It was a privilege and simply awesome. I’m sure if George Eastman, the man behind the Kodak camera, was alive today, he would be amazed at the way his original invention had been developed and used in transforming healthcare diagnostics. I know I was.

 

*The images are used for training purposes. All the images are completely anonymised with no patient information being either visible or disclosed in any other way.