Your phone will know you’re sick before you do
The growth in availability of portable and highly connected health devices will drive an expectation in society to be aware of our own health and more pro-active in the lifestyle choices we make. People will use technology to prevent and diagnose disease, and in some cases, bypass the doctor’s clinic by taking health care into their own hands, or at the least go armed to the doctor with helpful diagnostic information.
Our informed insight will mean that the doctor’s role will change. They will become coaches, rather than a source of initial diagnosis. Self-diagnostic tools will empower doctors to monitor, prevent and treat medical conditions. One early example of this is the ECG attachment for the iPhone, which is already capable of producing medical-grade data.
Private health care organizations will tap into health applications and their capacity for diagnosis as a result, and will offer these widely to consumers. Your smartphone will come to know your body better than you know yourself and doctors will provide a health care service based on your measured behavior and key health indicators.
Blowback
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not a world I want to live in.
tom daschle concerned on February 27, 2013 at 10:03 PM
And there’s no security risk – at all!/
OldEnglish on February 27, 2013 at 10:03 PM
Of course none of the information will be uploaded to your insurance company or employer. That would be wrong.
Xavier on February 27, 2013 at 10:10 PM
Is it going to call me from home? I work in a secure facility where any type of phone is not allowed and the ones that security has are really simple cells with talk only capability.
I think you find a lot of people that do that anyway. I know a few people that have used super glue rather than going in for stitches or epoxy to repair a lost filling. Then there are the thousands that depend on all the homeopathic and folk remedies. What drove up healthcare costs was all the liberal sissies that ran to the ER every time they got a sniffle or skinned their knee. Then they demand “wellcare” visits and endless tests to confirm that nothing more than liberalism was causing their perceived ill health.
Dr. Frank Enstine on February 28, 2013 at 8:34 AM