A Doctor used his iPhone, in combination with an AliveCor
-an iPhone-mounted sensor capable of delivering clinically accurate electrocardiograms — to measure the vital signs of a passenger experiencing severe chest pains at 30,000 feet.
When the readings indicated that the passenger was, in fact, having a heart attack.
The Doctor recommended an urgent landing. The passenger survived after being rushed to the hospital.
The use of apps that allow patients to measure and monitor their vital signs represents a revolution in the healthcare world. Devices like the iPhone will soon be able to pair with ingested or injected sensors: monitoring blood flow, sugar levels, sleep habits, heart rates, and more.
When one of these sensors picks up data of note, it will be able to contact a patient’s smartphone, or even a patient’s doctor in order to alert the physician and schedule an appointment.
Such technology could cut down on inefficient practices such as mass screenings for things like breast cancer, with patients instead monitoring their own hormone and blood chemistry levels with smartphone-paired sensors.
Manhattan Research’s “Taking the Pulse U.S. 2012” survey of 3,015 physicians in 25 specialties.
The survey, conducted in the first three months of 2012, found that:
- 62% of physicians owned a tablet computer, up from 27% in 2011
- 81% of physicians own a smartphone
- 62% of doctors owned a tablet computer in April 2012, up from 27% only a year earlier.
- Physicians with three screens (tablets, smartphones, and desktops/laptops) spend more time online on each device and go online more often during the workday than physicians with one or two screens.
- More than two-thirds of physicians use video to learn and keep up-to-date with clinical information.
