Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Why Real-Time Video Matters to Health
On Wednesday, January 19, IFTF released the report The Future of Real-Time Video Communication. This report addressed the question: What is the future of real-time video communication and what will it feel like to live and work in a world where real-time video is ubiquitous?
While the report did not specifically target health and the health care industry, real-time video will have significant impacts on health, including the locus of care, the speed and access to appropriate health information and expertise, and the enrichment of interactions between patient and clinicians as well as between patients themselves. Real-time video in the health space is also very important as a persuasive technology--enabling just-in-time, remote engagement for compliance, monitoring, motivation, and sustained behavioral change.
Earlier this week, in the SharpBrains Summit on the latest innovations in brain and cognitive fitness, Holly Jimison of Oregon Health and Science University described how Skype was being used as an integral part of their "health coaching for cognitive performance" program. Skype not only helped with clinical monitoring and real-time coaching, but was also used to cultivate the habits of social interaction necessary for cognitive health.
Mobile devices are being equipped as real-time video devices as well. Imaging, diagnostic, and assistive health applications are already being developed, and will also become an ever-present electronic "coach," giving us well-timed reminders for healthy lifestyle, diet, and exercise choices and behaviors.
The relative simplicity and low-cost of the current and coming wave of technologies points toward a future in which real-time video will play an essential part in our health and lifestyle ecology.
Where do you see health being impacted by real-time video?