iStockphoto.com
When people go online searching for health information, they're often also looking for someone who's grappling with the same problem. That's especially true if they're dealing with a rare disease.
The Internet provides a gateway to all kinds of medical facts and also to people who have come by that information the hard way.
Antimodular Inc.'s Pulse Phone heart rate app
The health care sector is in the early stages of a potentially disruptive era, with technological change in the industry being driven by the growth of smartphones and the number of connected devices readily available. More and more, apps are assuming a larger role in the system. There are currently over 6,000 health- and medicine-related apps in the Apple App Store, and, as we discuss in a new report at GigaOM Pro, mobile health is creating new possibilities for clinicians and patients to manage their care and track important health information.
The key question is how much are people willing to pay for these applications, and who will use the data to drive behavioral change in a manner that makes economic sense. Research on everything from cardiovascular disease to asthma is showing the connection between the environment and health outcomes. An early signal of what might be possible in this space is the platform Asthmapolis. Asthmapolis is a GPS inhaler-tracker app that enables users to track their own asthma conditions. The technology contributes to the public health understanding of the connections between asthma and place (where environmental triggers may be greater in some locations versus others).
If we think about mHealth in a more expansive manner, we can see how the insights from psychology, behavioral economics, persuasive technologies and neurology can be used to inform app development in ways that could revolutionize how we think about behavioral change. For the most part, the paradigms used in the health care arena for behavioral change remain woefully behind the times. What development of mHealth apps could inadvertently do is open a space for cross-fertilization of the health sciences with other disciplines — neuroanthropology, persuasive technology and behavioral economics, for instance. It could also have more impact on how we think about behavioral change for health as much as technology itself.
Read the full report here.
Sensor technology has become smaller, lighter and more powerful. At the same time, more attention is being paid to preventive health and personal fitness as an answer to the nation’s rising medical bills.
A result, for sensor companies like BodyMedia, is an opportunity to marry body sensors to smartphones to create full-body monitors. Last week, BodyMedia announced that its armband sensors would be able to communicate with smartphones, wirelessly, using Bluetooth. Its health sensors will be one of the first devices, other than ear buds, that link to smartphones with Bluetooth short-range communications.
