Tablet, photo by viagallery.com on Flickr
The article, “As Smartphones Get Smarter, You May Get Healthier: How health Can Bring Cheaper Health Care To All,” is a fascinating glimpse of the future in a profession and industry already reeling from the changes brought by technology in the last several decades. Even the most adamant opponents of health care reform acknowledge that the cost of health care is already too high and growing at a steep and unsustainable rate. Add to that our fascination with smart phones and the data that apps give as we track our sleep, calories, exercise, cholesterol, pregnancy, relaxation, etc., and it comes as no surprise that mobile technology is being developed to replace expensive equipment and tests.
There are bound to be legal issues around FDA-approval, physician and patient uptake, malpractice, and HIPAA –compliance (although iPhones/iPads are apparently HIPAA-compliant when using WPA2 Enterprise security). Still, the innovations that mobile technology offers are capable of transforming medical care. We know change is coming, but many of us think of it in only administrative and regulatory terms. This article gives us solid reasons to believe that technology can be harnessed to improve care and bring down costs, certainly two of the most important goals driving the changes in the field of health care today.
