Public health has been on all of our minds recently. With COVID-19 and its variants disrupting our day-to-day lives, we’ve looked to new solutions when it comes to work, recreation, and even medical care. At the same time, trends in mobile innovation have given us interconnectivity the likes of which we’ve never before seen. From Internet of Things (IoT) devices to electronic health records, interconnected mobile health technology is experiencing a revolution.
To take advantage of the benefits these mobile health technologies can bring, however, you must first understand the tech and what it does to empower users in managing their own healthcare solutions.
Technology is always advancing. While the healthcare sector may be slow to adopt all of the innovations of our time, the digital transformation has made its way to the medical field. This has the potential to streamline medical information storage and data ownership for everyone.
Mobile health technology revolves around insights and transparency. This means transformative analytical potential that can translate to real life-saving health practices. Here are the tech platforms that make it all possible:
Fitness wearables are a modern craze and one that carries big implications for medical care. Smartwatches, for instance, can track everything from heart rate to exercise goals to help individuals take better care of their bodies. And the COVID-19 pandemic only heightened the appeal. Now, 75% of mobile app users are accessing technology to monitor their fitness and nutrition as they strive to meet their health goals.
Connected wearable devices can make a huge difference for a user. For example, individuals with vein diseases have to pay attention to all the dos and don’ts when it comes to exercising with such a condition. Too fast of a heart rate or low oxygen content can cause problems. With wearables, however, individuals and medical professionals alike can track vitals and get a better picture of health conditions. This leads to more personalized and prescriptive care.
Now, on a 5G wireless network, more IoT devices and wearables can be connected to provide comprehensive streams of healthcare data. This means a better understanding of human health in general.
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world of mobile health tech by exploding the popularity of telehealth services. Telehealth, or telemedicine, is the process of receiving treatment from a medical professional over a virtual platform like a smartphone app, and it means you can receive care all from the comfort of your home.
This naturally came in handy as the world attempted to socially distance and reduce the spread of COVID. Now, 54% of patients prefer to contact their doctor over video call or email, showing the huge market for these mobile health solutions. Since an estimated 70% of doctor visits are unnecessary or could be completed virtually, anyway, the following capabilities of telehealth are proving the desirability of these services:
- Health record tracking
- Patient monitoring
- Medication reminders
Electronic Health Records
Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are the digital form of your patient information. EHRs also represent a huge security risk for hospitals and individuals, as cybercriminals seek to gain access to these records for sale on the black market. With healthcare cyber attacks up by 45%, we need all the help we can get in securing these platforms for data privacy.
Interconnected mobile health tech is also making security more possible, however. Due to innovative solutions for storing and protecting mobile data in cloud databases, app developers are finding new ways to protect private medical data. Among these are decentralized blockchain systems, which store data on independent but cryptographically linked nodes. This has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate and protect mobile health data.
These technologies and more are changing the ways we think of and interact with our healthcare. From a handheld touchscreen, it is now possible to monitor your health metrics, start a video call with your physician, or access your health records. In turn, interconnected mobile health tech offer benefits like:
- Greater accessibility of medical care.
- Cost savings for patients and care providers due to reduced transportation and resource use.
- Greater accumulation of more patient data for healthcare analytics.
- Improved diagnostic and treatment insights.
- Personalized ownership and accessibility of health care data.
With more data comes better healthcare solutions. This is possible due to the real-time tracking of IoT and wearable devices that give care professionals plenty of variables to analyze. From there, encryption tech can be used to de-identify private information and better protect patients while doctors assess the data for personalized and improved care.
Such improvements to health treatments are even possible virtually. With artificial intelligence algorithms that can diagnose conditions through imaging alone, telehealth services are increasingly becoming solutions for all kinds of health issues. All this makes for a world of more accessible and more precise treatments. In turn, lives can be saved all with the help of mobile tech.
Interconnected Mobile Health Wins
As mobile health tech is adopted by more care facilities, we see evidence of a field transforming for the better. One of these wins, for example, was recorded by St. Louis’s Advanced ICU care team. By integrating telehealth into ICU procedures, the facility experienced improvements in everything from length-of-stay times to lives saved. Here are some of the results:
- Average length of stay reduced by 36%
- Mortality rate reduced by 29%
- Acuity rate increased by 9%
With wins on the books for interconnected mobile health and smart device solutions, it is only a matter of time before these tools become more commonplace. The results are proven to save lives and make a difference in care. As mobile technology only improves, these benefits might even extend to data safety measures and improved remote diagnostics for more conditions.
Consider the power of connected mobile health platforms as you navigate your own care. After all, the transparency and accessibility of these systems might just save your life.