Now, 30 years later, we’re on the cusp of a different kind of revolution - the consumerization of healthcare middleware that gathers data about your body/activity from multiple sensors and consolidates it into a secure container on your personal smartphone. No cloud storage is used. In fact, Apple has specifically changed its policies so that health data is never replicated to iCloud. Data remains on your device under your control. Apple does not specifically provide a function to transmit data off the device. The intent of Healthkit is that it serves as middleware, consolidating data and providing a container to share data with other apps that you specifically trust.
For example, Beth Israel Deaconess, could create a Patientsite application that you trust to access healthcare data on your phone. Your care team could monitor this data for meaningful variations and intervene via a home care visit or telemedicine connection when appropriate.
If Congestive Health Failure patients have significant short term weight gain, a visiting caregiver could evaluate the situation and adjust the patient’s diuretic dose.
Recently, a donor committed significant funds to the development on an app that will do just that. We hope to have a running prototype in 2015.
Not only did Apple introduce the iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus (pictured below) as highly capable mobile computers, they also introduced secure e-commerce features (Apple Pay) and the Apple Watch.
Although Apple has introduced fitness applications with the Watch and iOS8, the greatest potential for the suite of products introduced today is the development ecosystem, enabling academia, industry, and government to innovate. Now that all the devices in your home can consolidate data about you into one secure container under your control, developers can focus on creative analytics, visualizations and alerts/reminders, not struggling to interface heterogeneous devices.
U2/Bono arrived on stage to play a new single. A few minutes afterwards, the entire album was released to 500 million iTunes users for free. What is the significance for healthcare? The fact that Apple can reach 500 million consumers in a moment is faster dissemination of innovation than any change management program that healthcare IT stakeholders could conceive.
It’s an exciting time, the Perfect Storm for Innovation, that I’ve written about in the past. Apple created an enormous white pavilion next to the Flint Center for the demonstration of these products. I spent the afternoon using the technology they announced.
Now the fun begins, changing the face of healthcare with new tools available to payers, providers, and patients over the next year.
2 comments:
Why are you wearing a kevlar shirt? Are you expecting gunfire at the event?
Kevler does not wrinkle, stain, or tear, so it's a great fabric to wear when traveling. Mine is very thin, so it's not body armor.
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