Imagine the year is 2014 and you receive a reminder by your smart phone that you have a doctor's appointment, but instead of getting into your Eco-car and getting into traffic you open up your laptop.
It is predicted that the laptop or your tablet will act as a "digital clinic" set up with sensors that can take your blood pressure, heart rate, heart's oxygentation, lung's carbon-dioxide level, basal metabolic rate, cholesterol level, stress level, risk of mortality rate ;then with a special scanner take bone mineral readings, measure cancer bio-markers for tumors as well.
With your hand being placed on your laptop, tablet or notepad the same scanner will use sonar by using sound waves to map out an echocardiogram and an EKG(ECG). The trade show even showed scanners that can read the brain.
Within that one scan by your laptop the cost of going to your primary care doctor goes down dramatically.
Think this type of technology is science fiction? Think again!
The recent 2013 CES trade show in Las Vegas revealed current possibilities with wrist watch sized scanners that can take blood pressure, pulse rate and measure even how many bites of food you need to take to stay nutritionally balanced.
Companies such as Fitbyte have pedometers that can measure how many paces you have to take to lose a certain number of calories.The company Zensorium has a device to measure stress, MP3 players have been developed for using sound wave tech as a stethoscope and the new Tricorder uses a Star Trek like scanner to measure depth of the skin for injury as well as the body's movement.
For years the ICU in hospitals have used pulse oximeters on the finger to measure accuracy of lung oxygentation, blood oxygen levels and the carbon dioxide going on in the blood. EKG(ECG) have been used by electronic signals to measure heart rates as wells as the EEG measures brain waves.This is all past technology.
There has been commercial technology for years that measure your body's metabolic or burning power of calories along with non-invasise glucose monitors.
Newer technology has looked at how micro-chips can help deliver drugs in an evenly timed schedule. Some of these have been approved by the FDA.
But, the new technology generates new excitement with the use of light beam tech, ultrasound, infared, and radio waves as well.
In FY 2012 it is estimated that the U.S.A. spent nearly 2.6 Trillion dollars on health expenditures. Just think how these new technologies when readily available on your laptop can impact the prevention of disease and high cost of illness in the near future.
The potential of improving wellness overall in a country that has difficulty with obesity and overweight status tipping in nearly at 70% can see valuable improvement within a generation . A healthier demographics can be within our grasp within a reasonable rate of time. This will translate into a healthier work force, student population and bottom-line for the healthcare system that is mandated by 2014.
Not only is it that these technologies assists the medical industry tremendously by reducing clinical errors, reducing excess or unnecessary clinical labor ,reduces clinical waste, lowers lost time on record keeping by clinicians, improve drug delivery, reduce liability, improve drug prescription error, and reduce costly clinic visits that can be used for otherwise prevention care maintenance and wellness in real time.
Combined with methodologies in wellness, prevention, worksite health, school fitness programs, America's health as a nation can't help but to improve. The costs of medical expeditures alone is enough to implement this.
But, many are wondering what might be the cons for introducing such a system. No system of itself is perfect and where the human factor plays a major role, there will no doubt be glitches. The big three could be:
1) What if there is a brown out in a digital system and power goes down. What happens to all that information and the computers that input it? Electromagnetic pulse waves from solar flares, or atomic power release could cause these brown outs.
2)The data that the computers will gather will obviously be fed to a large government or 3rd party payer system and these could be either accidentally lost or misfiled . Also hackers who see the opportunity of getting an individuals data may attempt to falsify, blackmail or hinder someone's insurability of health coverage.
3)If the tech becomes a booming place on Wall Street, whos's to say that a "health gadget" bubble or placing "puts" ( a form of insider trade betting on sales and options)couldn't affect the market.
Whatever the case , America's health status is in a critical crisis. Medical doctors are already being required to spend thousands of dollars along with other medical facilities for putting medical records online along with patient labs and pharmacies, not to forget HMO's and other 3rd party payers.
It is time to give healthcare the extra boost to the system if there really is to be any results soon or the "health-fitness-medical" tsunami will crash down hard on these shores.
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