The Future of Medicine Is in Your Smartphone
Smartphone technology is rapidly progressing and is greatly affecting health care. Smartphones’ increasing abilities can reduce our doctor’s visits, cut costs, speed up care, and give more control to patients.
Today, you can take a picture of a rash with your smartphone and an app will text you with your diagnosis and even advice on next steps to take. Smartphones are already approved to take blood-pressure readings or even do an electrocardiogram. The apps’ data are immediately analyzed and stored. All of this raises issues about personal privacy and the diminishing patient-doctor relationship. But the transformation is already happening.
Nowadays you can get a video consultation with a doctor via smartphone at the same cost as the typical copay charge. Several large consulting firms—including Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers—predict that virtual physician visits will soon become the norm. Deloitte says that as many as 1 in 6 doctor visits were already virtual in 2014.
