Physicians call it the 5,000-hour problem. If you have a common chronic condition such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes, the expert in charge of your health for almost all of your 5,000 waking hours annually is—you. And, frankly, you won’t always make the best choices.
As the world awaits the iPhone8 coming out in a few weeks, one of the biggest questions is what has Apple been able to add to what is called a phone, but is really a mobile computer with many sensors, and functions. One function that Apple has been developing with their “Health Kit” is DIY healthcare, where the “phone” becomes a link to diagnostic sensors and apps that enable more personal involvement in taking care of our health.
At the core, healthcare is, in great part, collecting over time data on the systems of the body, and then analyzing that data to determine treatments. Digital tools of high capability and processing power can be in our pockets, and can connect to Big Data analysis where powerful correlations can be made comparing out status with millions of cases in real time. This will only get better and faster and more capable; it’s one of those “things” that are in the straight up portion of the exponential graph of innovation.
This article below discusses the interface between knowing our current health state in determinative detail, and adjusting our behavior and making appropriate responses to that knowledge. We’ll need a boost of motivation to put into practice the ameliorative steps…as it seems we generally aren’t good at doing what we are supposed to do when it comes to changes in lifestyle, and consistently maintaining new behaviors and habits.
One potential option to motivate people is to provide benefits for those who do what their smart phone tells them to. Much as one can obtain discounts on car insurance for an accident-free driving record, and safety features in one’s car, we could get reduced Health Insurance costs if our phone tells the Big Data server bank that we have been “good”. Confirmed by on site tests.
[gview file=”https://publicservicesalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Testing-Health-Trackers-for-Chronic-Conditions-The-Atlantic.pdf”]