By now, most of us have figured out that ‘health 3.0’ is data moving through mobile devices.
We have downloaded apps of varying usability and interest; oftentimes, our desktops become cluttered with lots of free apps.
With a modest investment, we are learning mobile brings us more for less.
Last fall, we surveyed our cysticfibrosis.com community to see how they would respond to Mobile Health. From 600 respondents, we found:
- 66% said their current doctor/center is not vigilant about keeping them informed as to how contagious the bacteria are among CF patients (including siblings);
- 70% would agree to participate remotely with their doctor for monitoring various aspects of their health (pulmonary function, glucose levels, and heart rate, for example) through mobile apps on smart phones, iPads, computers, etc;
- 72% found desirable a state of the art home care room with remote monitoring applications so a patient with CF could reduce doctor visits and hospital stays by having the availability of most/all medical needs at home.
One commenter from the United States stated: “This would be absolutely wonderful … but the insurance companies won’t pay for it!”
This observation seemed highly likely—until March 31, 2011 when the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a 428-page document with the proposed rules for Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).
Proactive patients
The following is from Eric Dishman’s blog on the HHS publication: “The focus on ‘patient engagement’ shows a much-needed momentum around providing tools and expectations for patients to be a more proactive and responsible party in our own care. The explicit references to the use of telehealth and remote patient monitoring and the calling out of the need to move care to the home shows that CMS ‘gets it’ in terms of the need to ‘place-shift’ … where care occurs away from more expensive settings like hospitals.” (For the full blog, see: http://blogs.intel.com/healthcare/.)
Proactive patient commentary has been a staple on cysticfibrosis.com since 1996. The following thread is a typical real life adventure of a “place shift” problem: http://bit.ly/dIDbZr.
If expensive hospital rooms are going to “place shift” to our homes, I wonder:
Will our bedrooms become our new iPads? After all, ‘pad’ is slang for digs or residence.
Will our walls be interactive smart boards with live streaming doctors and healthcare providers?
Will our wallpaper be designer QR codes? (For more on QR codes, see ‘How Quick Response codes can help pharma engage with patients’.)
Toto, a Japanese company, brings us “intelligent toilets” (http://bit.ly/cmihW9) that give us a health check from our deposits.
We can monitor our weight, muscle mass, and BMI on our new bathroom scales, with the latest Wi-Fi technology from the French company Withings (http://www.withings.com/).
Getting dressed with our Bluetooth- and GPS-enabled sneakers from Nike allows us to have a personal trainer wherever we are, and never be lost: http://www.apple.com/ipod/nike/.
These and other globally created, wireless info trackers increase our personal health awareness and have the ability to change our lifestyles in real time. The data is ripe for research.
Mobile is poised to bring spiraling healthcare costs down to earth.
Fast, accurate, green, non-disruptive, safe. May Health 4.ALL surround you!
Patient advocate Jeanne Barnett founded the e-patient community at cysticfibrosis.com in 1996. For more information, see Medrise.com
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