Smartphone - A New Bot Serving Digital Healthcare

By Venkatesh D

Digital healthcare has reached homes and individuals through smartphones and wearable devices,
thus reducing space and time between providers, caregivers, patients and pharmacies with better coordination and continuum of care.

The healthcare IT market is projected to reach USD 228.8 billion by 2020 as per the market prediction. Currently, there are close to 0.17 million mobile healthcare apps. Projection is further backed by mobile majors Apple and Google through their new healthcare services like Healthkit and Fit.

Healthcare services include fitness, diet, pharmacy, insurance, community / networking, providers, facilities, paramedics, laboratories, medical schools, regulations and drug administration.

• Smartphone Healthcare Applications – Healthcare apps are present in different roles and features like women / child healthcare assistants, specialist finder, symptom analyzers, potential cause finders, treatment suggestions, facility finders, provider finders, find pharmacists with best prices, community apps for doctors who give tips and participate in open discussions along with patients, fitness enthusiast community to share experiences & thoughts, first aid emergencies, paramedical information and interactive quizzes, restaurant finder based on calorie, carb, fat and protein preferences, diet trackers, recipe finders, diet and fitness coaches, personal assistant apps which track distance, count steps, bites, sips, pounds, snores etc., personal nutritionist, practice management made easy for doctors to track their schedule efficiently, reward point based promotional apps from retailers and services selling healthcare products, social cause, charity and social game apps, neurologist apps for users with cognitive abilities, allergy tip apps which suggest allergy-friendly, gluten-free meals, brain teasers, riddles, logical problems, mind puzzle apps which improve analytical capabilities, apps as personal life coach, acupressure, meditation, yoga assistant, medical emergency apps, headache monitors, clinic locators etc.
  
• Smartphone Healthcare Attachments - Along with inbuilt sensors, portable peripheral phone hardware attachments add extra intelligence to smartphones, enabling them to track oxygen saturation levels, insulin levels, blood, sputum and DNA scanning (by QuantuMDX), visual acuity assessment, optic disc visualization, inner ear visualization (photosensitive smartphone attachments by CellScope), lung function (Bluetooth based spirometer, measures lung functions, by Cohero), heart function (mobile ECG recorder by AliveCor), body sound analysis (wireless stethoscope by Eko Core, non-contact thermometer and a digital stethoscope by CliniCloud), sonography, atrial fibrillation, urine test kit (by Scanadu) and provide interworking with weight scales, blood pressure cuffs, pulse oximeters, incontinence wetness readers, and other such detections.
  
• Smartphone – As a basic telecom device, watch, camera, contacts book, gyroscope, compass, accelerometer, global positioning system, magnetometer, barometer, proximity sensor, remote control, social networking and information gateway, music/radio player, game station, TV, an smartphone entertainer is now finally poised to make its next big debut as an ubiquitous and versatile personal digital healthcare assistant bot. 

Having been successful in covering versatile capabilities of a smartphone, SPAN has proven concepts of digital healthcare in realizing smartphone as a fully functional digital healthcare assistant. SPAN is poised to take digital healthcare service offerings to next levels by using smartphones, wearable and medical devices. This helps improve the overall healthcare experience driven by latest cutting edge technologies like, IoT, big data and analytics.