As we all know, technology within the medical field has greatly developed compared to about 20 years ago. At most doctor’s offices today, the doctors are no longer checking off their appointments with their clipboard and bulky sheets of paper, they are using a laptop or iPad to organize all of their appointments and patient’s information. Those methods are definitely a way of the future, but technology within the medical field is bound to get even more sophisticated as time continues.
In a TEDTalk entitled "Daniel Kraft: Medicine's future? There's an app for that", physician, scientist, inventor, and innovator, Daniel Kraft went through a fast-paced look at the innovations that were going to be made available in the medical field. From a blood glucose meter that could be integrated into ones iPhone and sends the results to their doctor, to a chip out of the UK that one can pee on and connect to their iPhone to check for STD’s.
With the way in which technology is going, especially for mobile devices, one will eventually be able to use their mobile phone for all of their medical needs. There already are many iPhone applications that can serve a variety of medical needs. For example, there is the Blood Pressure Monitor – Family Lite, which turns your smartphone into “a personal blood pressure and weight health monitor, and comes with lifetime data visualization, statistics reporting, medication correlation, email import/export, built-in reminders, and much more”.
Other applications like Epocrates provide its users with drug references, drug and disease monographs, diagnostic tools, plus much more. According the iPhone App Store, Epocrates has “more than 1 million active members, including 50% of U.S. physicians that rely on Epocrates to enable better patient care by delivering the right information, right when it’s needed”. Also according to the iPhone App Store,
“Healthcare professionals worldwide use Epocrates routinely to:
- Review drug prescribing and safety information for thousands of brand, generic, and OTC drugs.
- Select national and regional healthcare insurance formularies for drug coverage information.
- Identify pills by imprint code and physical characteristics.”
The range of apps that are available is extremely broad. As you can see there are apps that can be used for so many purposes, apps that allow you to use your smartphone as a stand-in for a stethoscope, to apps that can tell whether or not you have skin cancer. These apps put many smartphone users at an advantage, and thankfully according to ABC News “The FDA is working now on guidelines that will regulate certain apps, just as it does medical devices, and in the meantime, the FTC is keeping an eye on the claims being made”.
Below is Daniel Kraft at his TEDTalk looking through the innovations of the furtue: