Digital doctors
Doctors have a lot of clinical problems and engineers have lots of solutions, so pairing them creates great opportunities for innovation. A few years ago, NASA carried out an experiment using telemedicine to monitor the vitals of astronauts based at one of their underwater facilities. The aim of the test was to make mission decisions based on physiological data. So, the aquanauts wore something like a bio vest that measured their heart rate, and then with that activity they could actually make decisions. For example, they can decide which astronauts should go on a particular mission or predict if an astronaut will get sick. This is a very interesting concept that can revolutionize how we deliver health care.
If you want to be guaranteed that persons are at their mental and physical best, it’s important that you use data to make the decisions and not just ask somebody how they feel. This kind of concept is starting to creep into what we now call elite sports. A lot of the players are now wearing equipment in training that assesses how they are performing. This will soon be extended beyond the training ground. Now, on a Friday night before a big game, a coach can pick his/her best players not just based on talent, but on key health-related information.
Many of us are already familiar with wearable technology. These include the intelligent band on our wrist that measures our steps and smartwatches that measures our blood pressure. But the big game-changer in the next few years is going to be smart fabrics. This is already being developed in some research shops, but it just hasn’t hit widespread consumer market yet. Smart fabric basically means that your T-shirt would have fibres in it that will be measuring your physiological signals. So, instead of driving for one hour, then sit in a waiting room for 30 minutes, just to see your doctor for 10 minutes, all that information collected by the wearable tech, could be accessed by your doctor remotely. Based on the nature of the data retrieved, your doctor could then set up a remote consultation or recommend you coming in for treatment.
Hospitals as you know it, might have been built some 50 years ago with 30 seats in the waiting room, which was enough for that population. That’s completely redundant now because of population increase. Governments are now forced to build larger hospitals but that is not the most efficient way to deal with the issue. Traditional activities, like shopping, used to involve going to the department store, now that is being replaced by online shopping. Health has been a bit slower to catch up with the idea of information communication technology because we’re afraid about our data being shared and being leaked. But if we can trust the Internet for banking and so on, that means some good encryption methods are now available. So, is there a way to combine remote monitoring and artificial intelligence to deliver better healthcare? Yes, there is. It is called telemedicine and it is already being used around the world.
Micromoments is a technology company to the core, born out of a strong desire to change the narrative about software development in Jamaica.
