Integrative mobile health (imHealth ?) very TBD

by Taylor Walsh on December 11, 2013

in Apps,Digital Media,Mobile

@mHealthSummit Day 3 in Washington

From the Department of Bold Assertions:

The skeptic’s immediate response is: How so? We will find out by watching, and participating in, the great traditional strategy of the digital age product and industry development: Create it, put it out there, adjust, adjust and adjust some more.


fitbitThe Quantified Self movement equates directly to the integrative health ethos of self-care, in particular for identifying those lifestyle habits that can be improved by tracking the effects of activities someone adopts. Like wearing a Fitbit, or any of the countless monitoring devices on the market. But this includes getting on a scale and counting calories, even if the numbers are not fed into a database.


Dr. David J. Cook who led the Mayo study presented early findings yesterday (reported in mobihealthnews) 149 cardiac patients aged 52 to 85 were given iPads with the preloaded app My Care, giving each a daily to-do list and the means to record their: a) mobility (both self-reported and via Fitbit data) and b) pain. Results are monitored by the patient and by remote physicians, with clear implications for intervention strategies.

“Patients completed 98 percent of the 1,418 self-assessments we threw at them,” Cook said. The rate of engagement was the same for all age groups.

For the population cohort whose members experience the most acute and prolonged chronic illnesses, and who have often chosen integrative therapies to soften their physical, emotional and spiritual consequences, reports like this one are of great consequence. (Mayo has been dabbling in tablet-accessible apps for several years.)


This tweet is highly suggestive of the potential for a new expanded model of primary care — strengthening basic health, lower costs of care — that is infused with added integrative disciplines, like those that have been established at:

So far as I know (and Casey Health has been a client, still in its first half-year of operations), there is not yet much in the way of mobile health supporting the patient-patron relationships established by these innovative enterprises.


 
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