Posts Tagged ‘wireless’
What’s new in Smart Home technology?
09/11/2012
By Alex Lane (original article: What is a Smart Home? Samsung’s NaviBot S can clean the low places)
The original Smart Home device has to be the Teasmade, and the textbooks say that a smart home is one that uses home networking technology and your internet connection to automate and simplify everyday living.
It’s the use of networking and broadband connections that takes smart home technology beyond simple home automation, where each device usually stands alone, with its own control system.
Smart home tech is a fast-growing field, from cleaning your house to opening the curtains and switching on the lights. There’s also a growing field of utility and power management, for your gas, water and electricity [and for home health care]. Surrounding them all are unified networking and control systems that can control and monitor all of your devices, not just one for each.
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Wireless Opportunities in Health and Wellness Monitoring
08/10/2012
Bluetooth is a global wireless standard that enables simple connectivity among mobile and medical devices. Version 4.0, with its low energy features for long battery life, is already transforming the healthcare industry, creating efficiencies, and promoting responsible personal health monitoring, as noted in my earlier article, Healthcare meets Bluetooth Low Energy. But the following press release highlights new market research that predicts a … Read the rest of this entry »
Medical students invent app that checks your symptoms
08/01/2012
Craig Monsen and David Do show off their diagnostic tool for consumers.
Craig Monsen and David Do are fourth-year medical students at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine students. According to this article, they recently created a smartphone compatible website that uses big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence to analyze your symptoms and help determine the cause.
Using Symcat (symptoms-based, computer-assisted triage), you enter various ailments (fever, rash, cough, swelling etc.) and receive a diagnosis, prioritizing potential causes by likelihood and color-coding them by urgency. As you’ll see in the video demo below, entering and refining the symptoms and medical history is an iterative process, and the results are quite impressive. At some point, if you decide to see a doctor, the system also recommends local practitioners based on their specific specialty and experience.
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Too Much Hype in the Mobile Health App World?
07/27/2012
By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA
[Original post, “Too Much Hype in the Mobile Health App World?” published on The Huffington Post on 7/23/12 in the Healthy Living/Health News Section.]
The Wild West of mobile health (mHealth) is taking the health care industry by storm, but “there are no rules to the game,” said Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D., founder and director at the Center for Connected Health in a recent interview. Mobile health is a “game changer,” he added, but there is a lot of hype because there are a lot of people developing health apps just to “get rich quick.”
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Home Monitoring of Seniors will drive Wearable Devices
07/20/2012
Home Monitoring for Seniors Will Drive 36 Million Wearable Wireless Device Market
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - LONDON – July 13, 2012
A combination of factors including the growing senior demographic combined with economic, social, and technological developments are driving investment and demand for home monitoring devices that can extend and improve in-home care.
As the market transitions from safety focused offerings toward health monitoring and extending and enhancing the comfort, safety, and well-being for seniors living in their own homes and care homes, monitoring devices will grow to more than 36 million units in 2017, up from under 3 million units in 2011, at a CAGR of 55.9%.
Over the same time, home monitoring will almost double its share of the wearable wireless device health market to 22% from 12%.
“Healthcare providers and caregivers alike are looking for devices to improve the monitoring of seniors in their own homes as economics and demographics increasingly drive that demand” says Jonathan Collins, principal analyst at ABI Research and author of a new report examining the wearable wireless device healthcare market. Read the rest of this entry »
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Emerging mHealth: Paths for Growth
06/21/2012
In this 44-page market research report from PwC (formerly Pricewaterhouse Cooper), patients, doctors and payers share their sometimes-conflicting views on mHealth. We provide highlights below.
We live in a world that’s connected wirelessly with almost as many cellular phone subscriptions as there are people on the planet. According to the International Telecommunications Union, there were almost 6 billion mobile phones in use worldwide in late 2011. The ubiquity of mobile technology offers tremendous opportunities for the healthcare industry to address one of the most pressing global challenges: making healthcare more accessible, faster, better and cheaper.
Several factors effect how mHealth care will be provided, including:
- The ubiquity and personal nature of mobile devices;
- The very nature of always-in-touch mobility; and
- Competition that will increase functionality and drive lower prices. Read the rest of this entry »
Five Reasons Why mHealth is Not Going Away
06/19/2012
Five Reasons Why mHealth is Not Going Away
(despite the Hype-haters)
By David Lee Scher, MD
One feels almost assaulted by financial projections of the mHealth market every day. Extrapolations from the increasing use of smartphones, the use of iPads by physicians, the adoption of patient portals by insurers, and research of the Internet for medical purposes are commonplace. Occasionally there will be a welcomed “Let’s bring it back to Earth” post, but I can almost predict verbatim the final paragraphs of some of these predictions.
Mobile health is part of the overall movement of the digitization of healthcare. While adoption of these technologies will take a while to occur for a variety of reasons, (many of which have been the subject of other posts by this author), it would not be fair to let the hype become the face of the industry and an easy target of critics.
These technologies WILL become a major part of healthcare for the following reasons: Read the rest of this entry »
What mobile phone and tablet do you use?
05/18/2012
What platforms should healthcare app developers support?
While participating in the “What is Mobile Health?” Linkedin discussion that I mentioned a few days ago, an Australian app developer asked me the following question, sensing that I might have a helpful perspective. Because my response might also help Modern Health Talk readers, I’ll include both his question and my reply here.
Hi Wayne,
Can I ask what mobile phone you currently have and use? Do you have an iPad? The reason I ask is I find it interesting to appreciate the technology individuals use and the effects it has on the opportunities we see to advance healthcare.
@David, I have an Apple iPhone3, and both my wife and son (in Dallas) have an iPhone4s so they can use FaceTime video conferencing and we see our year-old granddaughter. On the tablet side, I have my wife’s old iPad after getting her an iPad2 to resolve conflicts over who gets to use it. BTW, she completely quit using her PC after getting the first iPad. Read the rest of this entry »
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10 Forecasts for the Future of Healthcare
05/16/2012
FORESIGHT may be the single most critical skill for the 21st Century. Knowledge quickly goes out of date, but foresight enables you to anticipate and navigate change, make good decisions, and take action to create a better future.
That’s why I’ve been a member of the Central Texas chapter of the World Future Society for years, where I meet interesting people with widely varied perspectives of the future. It’s also why I participate in so many Linkedin discussion groups on emerging healthcare issues.
The following ten forecasts came from the World Future Society’s special report, Forecasts for the Next 25 Years. It’s a promotional piece to attract new members who then get a subscription to The Futurist magazine.
Forecast #3. Nanotechnology offers hope for restoring eyesight.
Flower-shaped electrodes topped with photodiodes, implanted in blind patients’ eyes, may restore their sight. The “nanoflowers” mimic the geometry of neurons, making them a better medium than traditional computer chips for carrying photodiodes and transmitting the collected light signals to the brain. Read the rest of this entry »
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mHealth – Is it Mobile Health or Modern Health?
05/15/2012
What is Mobile Health? That’s the subject of a Linkedin discussion started by Wendy Thomas, founder of the Mobile Health Association in Austin, TX.
Her purpose was to clear up confusion between syllogisms, and the analogy she used was that Lions are all Animals, but not all Animals are Lions. The same goes with the health terms such as digital health, ehealth (electronic healthcare), mhealth (mobile healthcare), and telemedicine, so she argued that…
Mobile Health IS Wireless Health AND Mobile Health IS Telemedicine, but Wireless Health AND Telemedicine are not necessarily MOBILE HEALTH.
While I agree with the premise of Wendy’s argument, people often associate Mobile Health with the ambulance that shows up to provide care and transportation, rather than the use of mobile devices and wireless networks. That’s why I drew the diagram with Mobile Health not entirely within Wireless Health or within Telemedicine. Confusion still persists, and I’m adding to it with yet another term – Modern Health. Read the rest of this entry »
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