Through the use of mobile health technology, the collaboration is notably improving.
Among the many determinations that were made at the most recent Mobile Healthcare Summit, the ability to use mhealth technology is giving patients and doctors an improved opportunity for interaction.
This is helping to make healthcare more cooperative and could give patients a better opportunity for health.
According to one of the participants in the summit, Dr. Kendall Ho, the eHealth strategy office director at the faculty of medicine at UBC, and who is also among those who have embraced what mhealth technology is bringing to healthcare, this tech is making it possible for a more cooperative experience. This mobile health experience using devices and applications is making it possible to offer the type of care that will ultimately improve patient health.
In this light, doctors such as Ho have been prescribing mhealth apps to their patients.
Before starting to make these recommendations to his own patients, Dr. Ho was already using mobile devices and apps. He was already using a calorie counter and a heart monitor app and allowed him, personally, to be able to lose weight and decrease his intake of caffeine. In fact, when speaking of these types of apps, he said that they “changed my life”.
Dr. Ho also works in the emergency department at the Vancouver General Hospital. The expansion of this type of technology over smartphones and tablets has also had an impact on the types of recommendations that he makes when he sees his patients, there. The reason is that the majority of people are carrying these mobile devices, and one in every four people who have smartphones is using a health or fitness app already.
Therefore, when he notices that someone he is seeing in the emergency room has a smartphone, he recognizes that this may be an opportunity to help that individual to monitor or improve his or her medical condition – particularly one for which the E.R. visit is being made in the first place.
Dr. Ho’s opinion is that both patients and doctors can make use of mhealth and fitness apps, though he does caution that physicians and patients should be careful to make sure that the app is easy to use, useful, safe, and low in cost. It should also have a minimal privacy trade-off. He recommends that doctors test one application every month so that they can keep up on the latest and know what they are recommending.
