Smart phone medicine - is this the future?

[Texas Proud]

My sister just sent this to me.

It is a Rock Center piece on having tests etc. informaton sent to a smart phone.

It is really fascinating what can be done right now. I hope that some of this starts to come out more.


NBCNews.com Video Player

 

[Midpack]

I hope so, it makes sense as a place to start in some/many cases. Not a matter of if, but when IMHO...

 

[ERhoosier]

Interesting.....

but NO WAY is that iPhone doing my prostate exam

 

[ERD50]

Interesting. The first portion seemed way over-hyped to me. I'm no doctor, but I can't imaging that a two contact device on your fingertips is really the same as an EKG with all those probes glued to a shaved chest. If it was, it could and probably would have been done w/o using a smartphone as the 'brain' and interface.

That made me pretty skeptical, but as it went on, the automatic communication, like reporting stats to your doc directly, or when a preset alarm level occurred, and other inter-actions with the patient really did appear to bring some significant value-added items to the table.

And if you are developing a suite of interfaces, using the phone as the core of the device eliminates a lot of re-inventing the wheel, and takes advantage of the economy of scale of the cell phone market. Esp as it is re-used for multiple adapters.

Thanks for posting, very interesting.

-ERD50

 

[Bestwifeever]

My sister just sent this to me.

It is a Rock Center piece on having tests etc. informaton sent to a smart phone.

It is really fascinating what can be done right now. I hope that some of this starts to come out more.

NBCNews.com Video Player

And here I was impressed with the bubble level app I downloaded to check if a countertop sloped!

I am also thinking of the "blonde jokes" this report could trigger.

 

[ls99]

Interesting.....

but NO WAY is that iPhone doing my prostate exam

It is only a virtual finger.

 

[deserat]

Interesting. The first portion seemed way over-hyped to me. I'm no doctor, but I can't imaging that a two contact device on your fingertips is really the same as an EKG with all those probes glued to a shaved chest. If it was, it could and probably would have been done w/o using a smartphone as the 'brain' and interface.

That made me pretty skeptical, but as it went on, the automatic communication, like reporting stats to your doc directly, or when a preset alarm level occurred, and other inter-actions with the patient really did appear to bring some significant value-added items to the table.

And if you are developing a suite of interfaces, using the phone as the core of the device eliminates a lot of re-inventing the wheel, and takes advantage of the economy of scale of the cell phone market. Esp as it is re-used for multiple adapters.

Thanks for posting, very interesting.

-ERD50

A cardiologist will want the patient to get a 12 or 15 lead EKG if there is truly a problem - so the 1-3 leads are merely sending quick "rule-out" pieces of information. With regard to the alarms, there is a lot of concern that this is a lot of data that needs to be analyzed, so what happens is there is a 'call center' which filters and analyzes the data so that only the information that needs to 'acted upon' by the clinician is sent to the clinician.

With regard to the smartphone being used a a gateway device, there are many different ways in which you can use it - depends on what you want to do and where (i.e. process, display, act on the data at the phone, the cloud or the final data resting place).

PM me if you want more information.

 

[ERD50]

A cardiologist will want the patient to get a 12 or 15 lead EKG if there is truly a problem - so the 1-3 leads are merely sending quick "rule-out" pieces of information.

Thanks, that makes sense. It seemed the video tried to show them as equivalent rather than as a first screening device. Having cheap, accessible screening devices is a real advance on it's own.

-ERD50