This week saw a vibrant HealthCamp San Diego (#HCSD10) go in to the history books as the Inaugural South West Health Un-Conference. HealthCamp San Diego took place the day before the mHealth conference. There are a lot of mHealth events scheduled. It is THE hot topic in healthcare at the moment.
I was just reading Chilmark's review of:
"Is the mHealth Hype Justified?"
One comment caught my eye:
"the story from Stanford Medical School where new med students this year have been issued an iPad in the hopes of replacing mounds of paper that are typically distributed to students for a course over a semester. The students seem to like it and even one of the doctors is quoted as saying towards the end of the article that the iPad is in an ideal form/function factor for a busy physician." [my bolding]
This made me think. We have a brilliant opportunity to create a virtuous circle of ePHR adoption amongst consumers. When the iPad launched a survey showed that 60% of physicians were purchasing or showing an interest in the device.
Imagine the situation where Doctors are using an iPad in their surgery to record the notes from a patient visit. When they issue a prescription the patient could pull out their iPad or smartphone and "bump" to collect the prescription and any notes from the visit. Gone would be the days where the patient forgets most of what they are told within five minutes of walking out of the Doctor's office. The hyperlink truly becomes a prescription.
The technology for this is already available:
QR Codes could handle prescription data - just like airline boarding passes. We used the United Airlines Mobile Boarding Pass on the return trip. No need for paper as we passed through the TSA checkpoints and the boarding gate.
Smartphones can read QR Codes. Therefore a major scanner infrastructure is not essential but can be implemented in high volume locations. This means that adoption at even the smallest pharmacy is possible. The prescription can be "held" at a web site and once used is no longer available. This is exactly how online boarding passes work.
A mobile PHR application can be used to collect the information and store the data securely on Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault where it can be integrated with other data to create a complete view of our health.
The same bump application could be used to securely pass data collected from the patient - from their PHR to the doctor's iPad as part of the consult.
