The mobile health revolution is occurring in the midst of a much broader shift in business models around computing and software. For decades, IT suppliers sold proprietary hardware by locking customers in and upselling them for decades with add-ons and upgrades. The concept of switching costs became a tool for building barriers –barriers for customers …
This post first appeared on WBUR’s CommonHealth blog Last week, the Oklahoman news Website NewsOK.com reported that Dr. Thomas Trow, a doctor living in “far Eastern” Oklahoma (read: towns few and far-between), had been disciplined for treating patients over Skype for mental health issues. He was accused of prescribing them medications without ever having physically …
Doc Punished For Treating Patients Via Skype: What To Make Of It? Read More »
The hype over mobile health is deafening on most days and downright annoying on some. So it is with some reluctance that I admit that mobile has the potential to be a game-changer in health. I’ve professed enthusiasm before, but that was largely around the use of wireless sensors to measure physiologic signals and SMS …
As we grapple with provider shortages, the surge in chronic illness and the quality to price (QPR as they say in the wine business) challenge in US healthcare delivery, it’s hard to imagine a future that does not include some sort of guideline or algorithm-driven care. As providers take on more financial risk, one common …
Is the Future of Healthcare Delivery Guidelines or Personalized Medicine? Read More »
I have been following the news about the National Security Agency (NSA) access to our phone records with great interest. If we as a society don’t sort some of this out, we’ll see a repeat in the health sector a few years from now. These discussions seem to pivot on issues of population-level safety vs. …
What Does Screening Your Phone Records Have To Do With Health Care? Read More »
This past week, Google had its annual developers conference, Google I/O. One of the more provocative talks, called “The End of Search as We Know It,” was by Amit Singhal, who is in charge of search for Google. The vision, as described by Amit, is that instead of typing words into a box on a …
Is the End of Search the Beginning of Personalized Prevention? Read More »
I’ve been in the healthcare delivery business now for 30 years and I can confidently say we’ve paid almost no attention to design. Systems are built around physicians’ desires and workflows, and physicians tend to be quantitative, content-focused and able to handle multiple variables at once. Perhaps that is why we have not put a …
In a world where most folks change jobs every couple of years, people are often amazed to hear that I started work in connected health 19 years ago. Implicit in their amazement is a question, “Why did you stick with it so long?” The quickest response is that the work we started back then is …
Serendipity, Personalization and Connected Health Read More »
It has been 3 years since the cHealth blog entered the blogosphere, and it’s been a lot of fun. I recently looked back to see if there are highlights or trends in my posts and/or if my thinking or communication had changed dramatically in 3 years. Although not dramatic, if you look at these writings …
The cHealth Blog Turns Three: Reflections on 3 Years of Progress in Connected Health Read More »
I’ve written before about the power of analyzing what you write in order to predict things about your health. As more and more ‘big data’ companies and projects get publicity, it is fascinating to see how rapidly the field is growing. We are at the point where each one of us experiences the web differently …
