By Michael Colombo

Early desktop applications were targeted at automating existing manual processes. Take Computer Aided Design, which made it possible to create, edit and save a drawing digitally – imagine the countless hours spent doing this on paper. In healthcare, early telehealth applications linked patients and doctors without an office. But while each made things more efficient, they didn’t fundamentally change what could be done.

The smartphone did. It introduced an entirely new way of accessing and interacting with information and with people. 2013 saw over 1 billion smartphones shipped globally. Your newspaper, your television, your post office, your game room, your social network and basically your star trek communicator, rolled up into a device so small you regularly lose it on your kitchen counter.

Smartphones set new expectations

The power of pint-sized mobile technology with easy-to-use, social applications has re-engineered entire industries. Crowd-generated news, via Twitter, means instant access to "what’s happening now," at the same time services like Uber are destroying a centuries old taxi system.

Mobile applications’ profound impact on our personal lives has changed what we expect in our professional lives. In health care, it is not enough today to have critical health information tied to the location of the nearest desktop computer. Even in cases where enterprise applications are now mobilized, it doesn’t cut it to simply cram a clunky enterprise application onto a small screen. Like everyone, health care providers are now looking for the same access to patient information as they have to their personal banking information, and they want it delivered through easy-to-use applications.

The iPhone 6 as a health tool

Enter the iPhone 6. Which might just be the tipping point to mobile access in health care becoming the norm. This isn’t just a smartphone with a bigger screen; it’s packed with features that serve up healthcare and personal fitness applications at its core. The updated motion coprocessor continuously measures data from the accelerometer, compass, gyroscope, and a new barometer, making it possible to measure your steps, distance, and elevation changes. A bigger screen and more powerful processors aside, the greatest impact potential lies in a sea of change for the iOS operating system that now offers a healthcare development platform called Apple HealthKit.

HealthKit: Common Language Enables Common Understanding

HealthKit is a standard approach for storing and retrieving health information, enabling personal health apps to send data to and from electronic health records, remote patient monitoring systems and other health IT systems. Recent research indicates that as many as 90 million wearable health and fitness devices will be shipped in 2014. Each requires a standard format for data sharing. [1] Once integrated with HealthKit, these devices provide a constant stream of medical health information that can be aggregated or shared, based on user preferences. In a health care IT landscape that is shy on standardization, HealthKit could become the common language that puts device manufacturers, software providers, patients and physicians on the same page.

HealthKit apps integrated with wearable data are already under development at Stanford University Hospital and Duke University where they’re looking at how mobile technology radically changes the flow of health information and care delivery. At Stanford, doctors are working with Apple to allow physicians to track blood sugar levels for children with diabetes. Duke is developing a pilot to track blood pressure, weight and other measurements for patients with cancer or heart disease. [2]

These applications have the ability to fundamentally change the way physicians interact with patients before a health crisis occurs.

A Tipping Point Past Due

Pushed by higher user expectations, along with greater mobile capabilities, medical institutions are shifting their health IT strategies to consider mobile-first thinking. For health care professionals, the momentum created by platforms such as Apple’s Healthkit might just be what the doctor ordered.

Sources:
[1] http://mobihealthnews.com/36299/abi-100m-remote-patient-monitoring-wearables-to-ship-in-next-5-years/
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/15/us-apple-health-idUSKBN0HA0Y720140915