The vision of the future of healthcare is mobile (Apple-tethered), social and far less clinical in style, if you concur with this view of the future painted by Kaiser Permanente (KP). Connecting People to a Healthy Future (video 03:51) was screened at the recent NASA mHealth event at KP’s Washington D.C. showcase, the Center for Total Health [TA 15 Apr 2011]. Editor Donna noted that for all its sophistication (smart mirrors, instant access to health records and the like) the scenario of cross-country traveling Grandma (a Geisinger member with type 2 diabetes) and her sudden heat-induced dehydration at a picnic omitted or missed the real-time monitoring, present on the asthmatic grandchild, that could have prevented her hospitalization. And immediately popping Mom into the car to get her to the ER (ED) of a local hospital (she is faint but not out, and no sign of the usual first-aider steps of getting her indoors, cooled down and hydrated) seems to be a perfect example of healthcare overkill which after all we are out to avoid. David Doherty treats us to more commentary on this video and the KP vision over at his 3G Doctor blog.
(Editor Donna also notes that for what is presented in the video–including the in-hospital staffing assignments, the EHR access points, patient access to the internet and the in-room charts–the internet cannot go down or slow at all, else the wheels come off. Said reliability is hardly the reality today, as Ed. Donna’s physician brother could testify. A few hours of local ‘down time’ today at the clinic where he works left him without phone or EMR access–and a backlog of calls to answer and written patient notes to enter.)
Hi Donna,
Thanks for sharing this with your readers.
As for how healthcare systems that rely on connectivity can work when the internet is down check out the work that’s being done by Google with their ChromeBook.
Innovation in this space is coming on leaps and bounds but a good starter would be this computerworld article:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/cloud-computing/20486/chrome-os-offline
A flaw in the video relates to what you mentioned in your article; all the technology demo’d here is currently being tested or in pilot with KP. This should have been featured in the closing :10 of the video. It is a strong positive to state that while not here and now, these are all being tested by KP and could be in the immediate future. Else we are back in 2006 with Accenture’s talking medicine cabinet.