Lorraine Manlangit
ID # 20421450
HLTH 330: Health informatics
Winter 2015
Instructor: Joon Lee
Date: April 6th 2015
The future of medicine will soon move from the doctor’s office to the hands of individuals. Literally speaking, health can be monitored through wireless technology, more specifically smartphones. The main idea of Eric Topol’s (2009) talk is using wireless devices to advance health technology in order to reduce the number of occupied hospital beds. Through wireless health technology, health can be monitored continuously, allowing health outcomes to be detected or prevented earlier on. The advancement in technology will increase the speed …show more content…
Eric Topol highlights the idea of how technology currently plays a key role in our daily lives, and the potential it has to greater benefit our lives. In today’s society, it is almost uncommon to see an individual without a smartphone. With readily access to smartphones or other mobile devices, health care can be implemented into wireless technology. With such innovations, health care for both individuals and health care professional can become effortless as wireless health technology can be applied to various health problems. It is evident that over the years, technology has created greater convenience to daily life. The combination of health and technology will allow us to live day to day without worrying about adverse health outcomes. Furthermore, there will be great health benefits from such technological advances, as individuals will now have greater control while being able to closer monitor their health. This is an important aspect of home health care, as we understand that chronic illnesses must be monitored on a regular basis, cannot be cured, and is something we live with (Lee, 2015). Treatment can become more personalized, tailoring to individual needs. While these health applications can are often user friendly, they can provide a greater sense of understanding of personal health to the individual. This may be better in comparison to …show more content…
Wireless health technology is mainly applied to chronic health problems, with little success in application to acute or infectious diseases. As chronic disease occurs through slow progression, it is easier to monitor and detect health problems than infectious disease. As mentioned chronic disease is something we live with having no cure (Lee, 2013), where acute diseases often have treatment and can be cured. . As we place greater control on the individual, we cannot depend on their compliance that is required to ensure efficient monitoring of their health. For example, individuals may choose to purchase Nike products to monitor their health activity but may not remember to charge their bracelet, or wear the correct running shoes, and therefore misses the opportunity of collecting data. Individuals who are dependent on the iRhythm patch may forget to wear the patch one day and miss signals of heart failure. As we move towards a world of more technology dependence, we may not be prepared for complications that occur when technology fails. Coping with chronic disease involves educating patients (Lee, 2015). Relying only on health devices and health applications does not educate patients on the root cause of their health problem, if we only provide information of what is occurring to their health but not why. Wireless health technology must have alternative methods for monitoring health when devices