Nearly two-thirds of American adults (64%) now own a smartphone of some kind, and that number is on the rise. This shift to mobile has affected every industry from transportation to navigation. The question is, what does this mean for health?
Image Source: MANJUNATH KIRAN
1) Competitive Prices: Apps like CastLight and Pokitdok are bringing transparency to healthcare by providing consumers with price and quality metrics and making it easier to book an appointment with alternative providers. Companies, such as Vitals and ZocDoc, are making it easier for patients to find doctors that are available in real time, by allowing patients to see participating doctors’ open appointment times and book online. These apps are bringing competition to the healthcare market, which could reduce prices for tests, procedures, and checkups.
2) Increased Convenience: Telemedicine companies like Doctor on Demand, Pingmd, and HealthTap are bringing doctors to patients at their convenience, via video physician visits and free texts to doctors about health concerns. This offers cost-effective access to doctors, psychologists, and other healthcare providers in the country, which improves access to healthcare and has the potential to greatly reduce health inequalities. Other apps like Heal are reinventing physician house calls by bringing doctors directly to patients when and where patients want them.
3) Care Coordination: Currently, a huge challenge for the US is coordinating care between primary care, specialists, emergency departments, and hospital labs. Digital Health is a powerful tool to address this by making medical records more accessible and organized for patients, doctors, and healthcare systems. Check out MyChart and MyMedical to learn about apps that are making it easier to manage your health information and communicate with your doctors.
4) Improvements Addressing Lifestyle Diseases: Health monitoring apps, which capture data from sources such as wearable devices, glucose meters, phones, etc, have the potential to offer patients and caregivers a holistic and real-time view of health. At the same time, apps like Fitocracy, MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Fooducate, and HealthyOut make it easier for consumers to eat healthy and stay fit, which can help cutback on lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.
Of course, ultimately, how successful these new technologies will be is hugely dependent on us, the consumers. A telling sign? In the first half of 2015, 136 new companies raised more than $2 million each. Digital health, while not the cure-all, thus has the potential to radically reshape the way we see and experience health.
Feature Image Source: Jason Howie
