Patient Care is Changing Thanks to Personalized Medicine and New Technologies

While the jury is still out on the overall effectiveness of current mobile apps (see Mobile Apps Fail First Check-up, But Future Is Bright) one fact is true — mobile health apps provide smartphone users with the opportunity to better track their care, as was reported in the recent post Could a Smartphone Be The Future of Medicine?. So how can apps work to improve communication between patients and caregivers?

With more than 40,000 apps to choose from, consumers have a bevy of options. However, it’s the 17,000+ applications specific to helping to manage chronic disease such as diabetes, asthma, heart disease and stroke that seem to be taking center stage.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based New England Health Institute (NEHI), a national health policy institute, has identified 11 emerging technologies in a report titled “Getting to Value: Eleven Chronic Disease Technologies to Watch”  that it believes have the potential to improve care and lower costs for chronic disease patients, especially those in at-risk populations: Read More >

Could a doctor one day be able to prescribe 4 or 5 apps instead of 4 or 5 medications? Dr. Eric Topol says yes.

Dr. Topol, Chief Academic Officer of Scripps Health in San Diego, CA, expanded on this digital health transformation in a recent interview with John Nosta, a top health influencer blogging on Forbes.com: (read the entire interview here.)

What is the role of the consumer / patient in driving digital health?

We are ending the era of medical information asymmetry, with most/all information in the doctor’s domain. The consumer is now center stage—he/she will drive this new medicine with a rebooted model of physician partnership. It is the consumer’s data, the consumer’s smartphone, and the consumer’s choice of who, when and how to share. Read More >