Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Mobile Health Speeds Past Fixed Telemedicine for the Home
Telemedicine in the home has long been a holy grail scenario for the PC industry, form the days of Atari to the recent work we did for Intel on many-core computing. It's one of those things like video-conferencing that is always just around the corner.
What's ironic though, is that it may be mobile devices that carry the torch forward for home-based telemedicine.
Mobile devices offer a lot of advantages as a home-based telemedicine platform:
-they already contain a lot of user identity data and identity management features
-people have a complex and intimate psychological/emotional relationship with their mobile devices
-they can be managed remotely out of the box
-they are small, inexpensive and easy to upgrade when new features roll out
-support infrastructures are already in place
Source - inspired by one of the Rockelfeller mobile health papers - mobiles are already being used extensively in sleep research, as its the perfect platform for texting quick reports from a place/time that is very difficult to monitor otherwise
"sleep disorders are a good candidate for monitoring/reporting with mobile devices. this is because the mobile device is always present, already deployed, existing infrastructure to piggyback upon"