From Health Monitoring to Connected Health
Fabio Sergio, executive creative director at frog, a global innovation company, paints a picture of the future of healthcare, when the natural evolution of data-driven health monitoring leads to a paradigm of consumer-centered care. Sergio argues that the tech revolution that has come to healthcare, in the form of body monitors, apps, and online patient communities. He says, “The boundaries between lifestyle and life-care are blurring, perhaps even fading away.”
He talks about episodic body monitoring giving way to continuous monitoring giving way to an empowered consumer who fully participates in his care throughout his life. Traditional healthcare providers will be supplemented with “community health workers” who with mobile phones and e-diagnosing tools will provide care in places traditional healthcare services have trouble reaching.
However, he also points out that the transition will not take place by simply exposing people to massive amounts of data. We need Big Data to find a way to turn the data into meaningful insight.
MobiHealthNews reports that this evolution is well under way, with wireless health sensors set to grow from $4.9 billion in 2012 to $16.3 billion by 2017.
“In the next chapter of the industry formerly known as healthcare, people will start to see the care of their health as a lifelong narrative,” Sergio says. “These stories will be about people’s lives, not about the diseases that happen to affect them. Although there will be more data available about people’s health experiences, they will learn and demand to be understood and spoken with as human beings and individuals, and not be considered a statistic.” And the more empowered healthcare consumers are, the more healthcare moves from “prescription” to “choice.”
Click here and here to read more in MobiHealthNews and here to read a white paper on connected health.
Drunken Androids parody image © Etamme / Wikimedia
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