03-05-13 | Blog Post
Online Tech is exhibiting our HIPAA hosting solutions for the healthcare industry at HIMSS 13 in New Orleans this year! Tune into our Twitter and follow our blog for updates on the latest HIMSS 13 news.
If you’re at HIMSS 13, visit booth #1369 to say hi or schedule a free one-on-one consultation with a panel of health IT experts.
Day two of HIMSS 13 kicks off with a keynote by Eric J. Topol of the Scripps Health and Research Institute.
Eric J. Topol
West Endowed Chair of Innovative Medicine, Scripps Health and Professor of Genomics, The Scripps Research Institute, Cardiologist
As a leader in the movement to modernize medical treatment through the latest technology, Dr. Topol is creating new, more effective ways to treat patients — ways that will dramatically bring down the costs of healthcare. His new book, The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How The Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care, is about how social networking, smartphones and the powerful new tools that sequence each individual’s genome will give consumers control of their own individual information and revolutionize medicine. He is also a leading medical researcher in the area of genomics, where his work has led to the discovery of the genes that increase a person’s risk of heart attack. He has pioneered new drugs and new advances in the treatment of heart disease. Dr. Topol is working to bring a new kind of medicine into widespread practice: specifically-designed treatments based on the individual’s unique genetic structure and physiology. This innovative approach, combined with the latest in medical technology, opens up a world of highly individualized treatment, better care, reduced need for hospital beds and lower costs for everybody.
Eric demonstrates how to measure your heart rate and oxygen saturation live on his iPhone.
Eric demonstrates how all of your vitals can be reported in real-time on your wrist.
Eric J Topol wants our iPhones to be the new printing press – a creative force to disrupt physician-centric practice and enable homo digitus – an informed, digitally-enabled patient.
The new pioneer on the medical frontier is Homo Digitus. With sensing technologies and monitoring in the palm of our hand, we can make a Google map of the human body. Organs, tissues, or areas of concerns will become the new landmarks in the landscape of patient awareness, with iPhone apps as the window to our medical matrix.
You can already see the evidence emerging at the Apple store, where diabetics can get a glucometer as an add on to measure blood glucose levels minute by minute.
Need to watch your heart rate? No problem with the echocardiogram iPhone case. Just place your fingers on the back of the phone, and voila – instant EKG – chart and all.
Sleep studies at the hospital cost at least $3k each night, Stay at home and use your iPhone instead- who can sleep normally at a hospital anyway?!
The US Bicycling team credits their silver medal to the tracking of their sleep, vitals, and exercise stats with their smartphones.
Who is the king of sleep? Lebron James averages 12 hours of sleep each night – no wonder they’ve won so many games! Tiger Wood averages the least sleep every night at only 4-5 hours … hmmm.
Other cool iPhone add ons? How about a refractometer to measure eye prescription? Ear infection? Stay home, slap on the iPhone otoscope, take a 10x lighted picture, and text it to the primary care doctor for a diagnoses.
Your iPhone may save you from one of the most dangerous places on earth – the hospital. The annual cost of measurable medical errors exceeds $17.1 billion by some estimates. Now home devices that can monitor movement and activity in the home can replace in-patient observation – saving money, and keeping patients safer.
HealthPartners tried an online clinic for simple conditions, and saved an average of $88 per episode. Even better, patients were thrilled! Pretty soon, the doctor’s office will feel as far away as the video rental store.
How much can these sensors make a difference? Stay tuned later this year for the results of an ongoing study measuring “hotspotters” (patients with high-touch ailments) and their resource consumption comparing a group assigned with health iPhone apps. Results to come.
The domain of genomic sequencing offers even more promise. Patients who endure the Odessey of diagnostic epics can identify markers that can suggest effective treatments even when exact diagnoses are out of reach.
We have MOOC now for education: Massive Open Online Courses
Now we need MOOM: Massive Open Online Medicine.
We have sensors in our cars to detect oil pressure. What about sensors in our body to detect artery fractures prior to having a heart attack. CAL TECH has one – the size of a grain of sand – that transmits to an app with its own “Heart Attack Ringtone” hours or days before the heart attack presents.
Johannes Gutenberg led the revolution of knowledge with the printing press. The digital revolution can do the same for medicine. But with this revolution, we can not repress the patient’s access to their information. We shouldn’t make patients go through a 3rd party to get genomic results. A study by 23&Me showed that women who got their BRCA results didn’t despair – they took action. An NPR survey showed that 73% would have their DNA sequenced.
Now some hospitals are adopting an open notes policy, so patients can read all notes and details of their medical record. THey might have to learn that SOB means Shortness of Breath, but in the balance, empowering patients with all of their patient information is the only road to engagement.
The new flywheel of medicine: Access Your Data -> Share Decisions -> Get Support
The mantra of patient engagement should be: “Nothing about me without me”, and in the modified words of Jerry Maguire, SHOW ME THE DATA!!
