The (Internet Of Things) Doctor Will See You Now -- And Anytime

forbes.com

The healthcare business is in an upheaval of sorts. The disorder is driven by the arrival of the Internet itself, the ‘wearable’ Internet of Things (IoT) and the wider freedom and accessibility of information. In some instances we can see individuals using ‘devices’ from fitness & blood pressure monitors to blood analysis kits and onwards to start taking their healthcare into their own hands. But extensive and extended medical self-diagnosis is of course not necessarily a good idea.

The challenge facing healthcare providers is — how do we harness this user information empowerment and integrate the patient data being generated into the more formalized healthcare system at a national level, securely?

The health of nations

We know that healthcare providers around the world (whether in the public or private sector) are increasingly requiring patients to engage more fully in managing their own state of health. This means health services have to move from a focus on institutional health record management, onward to making that health data available for all patients and their devices.

Crucially, doctors must now allow patients to become an active part of the data collection process. This could have a huge impact on the health of nations.

As an analogy — if banking applications only allowed us to look at our bank balance, they wouldn’t be too popular. In healthcare, medical thermometers have been around since 1602. But because Internet banking allows us to perform transactions, track spending trends and set interactive savings goals, these apps have proliferated. Personal IoT device-driven healthcare is on the same kind of evolutionary curve.

As the Internet of things expands, we will need to develop systems that can take advantage of all the information that is increasingly available and that is relevant to the individual patient — yet make it simultaneously available to both clinician and patient in readily selectable, understandable and useable form so that it can positively affect health outcomes. Medelinked thinks it has a solution to meet these requirements.

Help the doctor to help you

Medelinked is a secure online health web service for users to build a health profile and then connect that information stream with their trusted health providers. Patients fill out a survey about their current state of their health, select the health records they want to share and send the snapshot to their doctor from the comfort of their home. The snapshot will appear as a dashboard in their doctor’s Medelinked portal, which they (the doctor) can view before an appointment.

This proposition here is that this could save doctors time during the consultation which would normally be spent trying to understand the problem, as well as prevent unnecessary appointments that could be dealt with remotely. Once connected, patients can get health advice in real time and chat instantly with health providers by voice, text, email and video. The company is UK-based and already serves international healthcare plan holders with Aviva and IntegraGlobal — it is also working on connecting patients into national healthcare systems.

According to Medelinked’s CTO, Jas Singh, “This has become a hot area for developers because it is also coinciding with an explosion in the availability of devices and services that can collect data about the individual’s habits and health indicators and apps and systems that can securely store and access the data that comes from an expanding variety of sources.”

Singh continued, “The key issue and the lesson for the future of IoT here is how decisions by providers and users alike will affect how useful the IoT will become. For instance, health management systems that only accept information derived from Apple iHealth or Google’s rumored medical-grade fitness tracking wristband will simply not deliver sufficient information required for significantly better health management and diagnosis.”

This manifestation of IoT has to allow any form of input, including that directly from human beings as well as from a myriad of monitors and deliver that information anywhere in a form that makes input, understanding, interpretation and decision-making easier, quicker and cheaper.

The ‘Healthcare IoT’ (HIoT isn’t real, don’t panic) could to change that way we approach health management and deliver better outcomes for all concerned.

Types of devices

What kinds of devices could we be talking about? One of the more ‘finessed’ products around at the moment is the iHealth blood pressure range. The devices come with a free mobile application and sync with iPod, iPhone and iPad – plus Android devices. The build quality is high, the readout results are accurate and the user experience is good. The point of a product like this is its portability and ease of use; it encourages the user to track personal blood pressure and start watching their health on the same device that they use to check Facebook.

According to the company, “The free iHealth MyVitals app automatically keeps a history of your data and gives you the option to share your information with your doctor or caregiver. Our devices work with both Apple and Android devices.

The ‘Healthcare IoT’ (HIoT isn’t real, don’t panic) could to change that way we approach health management and deliver better outcomes for all concerned. We can also suggest that, if implemented on open principles, it will change the doctor-patient dynamic that has existed for 100s of years as we finally give the patient the tools to become a true partner in their own healthcare.

Just remember, it’s the Internet of Healthcare PLUS your doctor, not instead of a visit to the surgery — so keep taking the tablets.