Boomers have marveled at the return of bellbottoms, skinny ties, mullets, and moustaches. Memories of misspent youth, suddenly became exciting trends for the generations that followed. Now we’re discovering that the process of rejuvenation applies not only to fashion, but business models too. Take, as examples, the kid across the street who cut your grass …
Ali Edwards is a little obsessed with her Fitbit, a wearable device that tracks her steps, miles and floors. “I’ve been known to walk around the bedroom at night so that I reach my goal,” laughs the Edmonton-based 79-year-old. The Fitbit contains an accelerometer that measures movement and a tiny altimeter to measure barometric pressure …
Five years ago, President Obama began the largest regulatory overhaul of US healthcare since Nixon, expanding coverage and radically redefining how coverage is purchased. In his 2015 State of the Union, Obama delivered a different kind of disruption, announcing the creation of a Precision Medicine Initiative, a $215 million genetic database that will make it …
When I was a medical student in the mid-2000s, I witnessed the early phases of mobile apps designed to help deliver healthcare. They were mostly electronic books, in the form of preloaded web pages. We’ve come a long way: I’m now a practicing physician and I find myself using an increasing number of mobile health …
Virtual care (where the provider and patient are separated in space and sometimes in time) is a natural next step in technological innovation for healthcare. Increasing care virtualization has the potential to improve quality of life for patients while increasing the healthcare system’s efficiency but it presents substantial challenges for clinicians and policy makers. The …
When talking with my family and friends outside of healthcare I get mixed reactions to what eHealth means. Responses can range from simple to sad. “Is that like MRIs and stuff? “Do we have electronic records like at the store?” “My doctor has a Blackberry…. but I can’t email him, so I don’t know.” However, …
Health Apps will be “prescribed” by clinicians for their patients in the near future. This article tries to sketch out how this “TechRx” and “Apps Pharmacy” process could/should develop. According to a recent report from Healthcare Information Management Systems Society, there are about 17,000 healthcare apps currently in use. This compares to a reported 300,000 …