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Monday, 1.07.2024
eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001
Apple's iPhone has gotten people using the Internet and apps more than any other phone. Could it also become a mainstream tool for medicine?

Medicine is, after all, something that Apple has been trying to influence since the 1990s. Before its discontinuation, the Newton platform was distributed to health workers and doctors. But more recently, Apple is hoping that its newer iPhone and iPad can play a role in science and medicine.

Read more: Sorry, The iPhone Isn't Revolutionizing Medicine – Yet

An emerging global trend shows health professionals and individuals are managing health with text messages that range from daily reminders to drink enough water to prenatal care.

On July 30, Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio, USA outlined an ongoing pilot study that uses texting to keep diabetic youth on track with their meds. The texts included "personalized questions and reminders" addressing "glucose testing, meal boluses [insulin treatments] and frequency of high and low glucoses" plus "friendly, supportive messages" to patients. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WinDPSY59EA

Read more: TXT 4 health: well-being, global health, chronic disease management

You are probably hearing a lot about mHealth these days.

It’s short for mobile health.

At it’s simplest it’s using existing mobile phone links to get data to doctors from remote clinics.

At its most complex it’s tiny devices that measure important health metrics — blood sugar, blood pressure, even glaucoma — deliver the data via a wireless link to some analysis software, then sound an alert where necessary.

Read more: The mHealth backlash has begun

Mobile healthcare technology is delivering decision support right now, but it’s not all for clinicians, according to panelists at the World Congress second annual leadership summit on mHealth in Boston last week.

Y Given the opportunity, many patients will become more engaged in their care, proposed Katherine Clark, RN, manger of telemedicine at Englewood Hospital Home Health and Hospice Services; Joseph C. Kveder, MD, founder and director of the Center for Connected Health, Partners Healthcare in Boston; and Alexander M. Nason, PhD, program director of Johns Hopkins Medicine Interactive and director of telehealth at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

Y Home care “self-empowers patients so they can understand their illness a little better,” Clark said. Englewood Hospital provides a secure encrypted, password-protected and firewall enabled monitoring program for congestive heart failure (CHF).

Y

Read more: mHealth: Telemedicine delivers patient decision support

Health-care providers looking to implement a mobile strategy need to understand the strong bond people have with their smartphones, said panelists Friday at the World Congress' Summit on mHealth in Boston.

"There is nothing more personal than a mobile phone," said Julie Kling, the mobile executive business lead at health-care provider Humana. "The phone is a personal tool and you need to use it in that way."

Read more: Mobile health requires grasping smartphone, user connection

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