The future of smartphones in healthcare
Smartphones are fast becoming an almost ubiquitous technology. In 2009, approximately 64% of doctors in the United States owned smartphones. Just a year later, a separate investigation placed smartphone ownership among healthcare professionals in the U.S. USA By 81%, growing to 91% in 2012. Smartphone ownership among European healthcare professionals grew at an even faster rate, from a lower initial penetration from 44% in 2010 to 81% in 2012.
which exhibited an equally impressive increase in use by doctors from 30% in 2011 to 62% in 2012 to more than 72%. in 2013. The rapid increase in the tablet is not surprising, since 51% of health professionals use tablets to access electronic health records (EHR), the second most frequent use after sending emails. These clear trends in the adoption of mobile devices, both in the general society and in the medical community, have positive implications for the health of patients and the doctor-patient relationship.
Use outside the clinic
The first frontier of mobile healthcare technology is the use of software applications (applications) and peripheral hardware outside the clinic by the patient who connects or connects to a smartphone or tablet. Medical devices compatible with smartphones, such as scales, blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeters, are already arriving at patients' homes. By providing health information and guidelines for use in a user-friendly interface, devices paired with smartphones allow patients to play an active role in their own health. Unlike previous generations of home monitoring equipment that required manual record keeping, the applications associated with these devices for smartphones allow patient data to be automatically recorded and stored in personalized profiles that can be transmitted in a uniform manner. insurance to the patient's medical home. They also present this data in complete visual formats, such as graphs that convey trends over time, and generally include explanations of the appropriate ranges for a health metric, given the specific factors of the patient, such as age, weight and sex. By avoiding the need for tedious data collection and placing the emphasis on educating the patient about their own health, these apps can improve patient engagement.
There are currently numerous medical devices on the market, each of which interacts with its own application. Looking ahead, the next generation of mobile technology needs to take into account the integration of multiple devices and the tech-savvy patient who tries to track data from different devices. Some apps are already moving in that direction, for example, interacting with a scale and blood pressure monitor, in addition to monitoring health and fitness activities, providing cloud-based health information management that can interact with any medical device to smartphone or present a complete tool to measure temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygenation. With an app at the center of a family of devices, patients can centralize their medical care at home.
Visual acuity assessment, visualization of the optical disc (ophthalmoscope), visualization of the inner ear (otoscope), lung function (spirometer), cardiac function (ECG), analysis of body sound (stethoscope) and even ultrasound (ultrasound) ) can now be done using an application or peripheral hardware, and most of them are either FDA approved or about to become one. However, these devices are not intended to replace visits to a doctor. They simply facilitate the collection of clinically relevant data, allowing doctors to spend more time analyzing and interpreting data, advising patients and developing treatment plans.
