21st Century Medicine: Where Big Tech Is Placing Bets In Healthcare

Tech has already had a major impact on the healthcare industry in areas such as medical record systems, connected medical devices, telemedicine software, and a growing number of digital therapeutics startups that help patients manage chronic conditions at home. And over the last few years, the largest tech companies in the world have begun to bolster both internal development of healthcare products as well as their private market activity in the health sector.

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Room for Improvement in Compliance Apps — Likely need more than just a reminder feature

Doctors have been trying to get their patients to consistently take medications since the advent of medicine. Even Hippocrates described how some of his patients would feign compliance to his treatment plans. It may seem like a simple concept, yet achieving compliance has been elusive in modern medicine despite iterations of potential solutions. Complex factors make up the barriers for medical compliance, and it is unlikely that there is one catch-all solution. Using advancements in mobile health to address these issues could potentially decrease the morbidity and mortality of noncompliance.

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Devising new metrics for senior health with the smart home

The U.S. healthcare industry is undergoing seismic changes brought on in large part by a growing greying population. Home­based care and connected aging with smart environments for seniors are gaining traction as pivotal solutions, with the number of skilled nursing homes in the country stagnating for more than a decade. Fortunately many seniors — 90% — prefer to age in place in their own homes.

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Quality, Safety of Health Apps Remains Murky

We have come to a place in mobile health (mHealth) where the problem is no longer a lack of available apps. Patients and healthcare providers are using health-related apps on their smartphones. Research studies have shown promising evidence that certain disease outcomes can be improved with the implementation of a mobile app.

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Smartphone Apps Meet Evidence Based Medicine

“The future of medicine is in your smartphone,” proclaimed an eminent medical researcher in a 2015 Wall Street Journal essay. In a sense, the future is already here, judging from the proliferation of apps and medical devices that are connected to smartphones. One industry study in 2015 identified more than 165,000 health­related “apps” for smartphones on Google Play and the Apple iTunes store. But how much does this technology lead to improved patient outcomes? That question is one of evidence based medicine, to be answered by clinical trials and systemic reviews by medical experts.

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Mobile technology trends to watch out for in 2017

Like it or hate it, 2016 was a turbulent year that provided a clear message: Our phones enable fantastic and fast communication. Here are 10 predictions about mobile technology trends in 2017, counting down to the most significant change to look out for.

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Is Your IoT Device Spying on You?

I was born on the cusp of the internet revolution. As a kid, my friends and I roamed the streets and were more or less off the grid. Once we left the house, we were untraceable. We had to run to a friends house or a pay phone (remember those?) to get in touch with a parent.

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From Customized Shoes To Interactive Gaming, Nike Scores With Record High In Patent Grants in 2016

Nike won a record high of over 690 patent approvals in 2016, partially driven by a major expansion of patent applications the previous year. For a retail brand, Nike has been active in the tech sector over the years, collaborating with Apple, launching various wearable apps and devices, and making private market investments in artificial intelligence (via startup Reflektion) and supply chain optimization (via startup Llamasoft).

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Smartphone apps are found to reduce depression, anxiety

A suite of smartphone apps developed by Northwestern Medicine has successfully reduced depression and anxiety symptoms in study participants by 50 percent, an efficacy rate similar to that typically achieved through psychotherapy or antidepressant medication.

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MyHeart Counts, a ResearchKit App Study, Releases First Results

This week, Stanford's MyHeart Counts Cardiovascular Health Study published initial findings from its ResearchKit-based study. And for anyone interested in digital health, particularly research, the findings are a must-read.

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IoT security vulnerabilities turn hospital CIOs' dreams into nightmares

A connected healthcare where patients can transmit data back to their physician to monitor their vitals after leaving the hospital has been a dream for many. The ability to leverage connected devices to capture and transmit relevant health information from a patient's heart monitor while at home or record oxygen levels while in the operating room shows the power of medical devices. But with the recent debilitating distributed denial of service attacks against some of the top DNS servers, such as those used by Amazon, many IT executives have had to question whether or not their IoT strategy is still safe or even possible.

 

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The Subtle Ways Your Digital Assistant Might Manipulate You

TODAY WE GOOGLE for information, but in the future, we might not need to. Instead we may rely on our butler, namely the intelligent, voice-activated digital assistant on our smart phones, smart watches, or devices like Amazon’s Echo and Alphabet’s Home. Rather than searching the web, we’ll be able to ask our digital assistant how to remove the stain from our shirt. It’ll perform other perfunctory tasks, like adding groceries to our shopping list, checking the weather, sending a text, or ordering an Uber.

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Alexa and Google Home Record What You Say. But What Happens to That Data?

IF YOU GOT an Amazon Echo or Google Home voice assistant, welcome to a life of luxurious convenience. You’ll be asking for the weather, the news, and your favorite songs without having to poke around on your phone. You’ll be turning off lights and requesting videos from bed. The world is yours.

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The Wonderful World of Wearables – The Latest Wearable Technology

When most people think about wearable technology, Fitbits and Apple Watches come to mind. While these are devices have been game-changers, the world of wearable technology is so much larger - and it’s getting bigger every day.

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