Embracing Android

Happy New Year!   I'll be posting blog entries twice a week in 2019, describing my experiences in the healthcare IT innovation economy and international digital health.

Throughout my history in the industry, I’ve tested many emerging technologies and tried to predict future winners.   Here's a CIO magazine article from 2007 in which I replaced my computing platforms each month to rigorously test Windows vs. Linux vs. OSX

In the late 2000's, I felt that Microsoft had lost its agility and focused on adding features that few people wanted at the expense of usability.   I switched to Apple products because the software felt more utilitarian, secure and stable.

Now, I'm asking if Android and Chrome OS has the balance of features and usability that best meet my requirements for 2019.

I've moved to my phone to a Google Pixel 3 to help answer that question.

Thus far, my experience has been remarkable - a good mixture of speed, stability and usability.   I think of it as a toolbox that doesn't prompt me to adopt functions that I don't want.  

One of the best features is a simple consolidated notifications display that enables me to scroll down from the top of the screen and see every change that has occurred since I last picked up the phone - email, texts, app messages, reminders, and calls.

The gestures are intuitive.    The browser is Chrome (works everywhere with everything) and the email client is the highly usable and stable Gmail client

I've been so impressed with the functionality of my Android phone that I decided to move my computing environment to Chrome OS and Android as well.   My Google Pixelbook arrives on Friday and I'll travel with it in India next week.

I'm writing this using Gsuite.    My data is stored on Google Drive.  I'm making my purchases with Google Pay.

All of this will be an interesting experiment, but thus far, it seems to me that the future of healthcare IT looks belongs to cloud hosted applications/services accessed from thin browser-based and mobile clients.   Android/Chrome OS might very well be those thin clients.

I’ll report on my experiences as they evolve.