The future of medical care

Let's look at a real story, "Who Do you remember when the stethoscope was invented?" Eric Toppe (Eric Topol), a cardiologist, asked the listener at the table loudly. The scene took place at the Ted Technology Summit in Los Angeles, California, in March 2010. Under the table are thousands of technology company leaders, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, technology blogs and media, without doctors and medical professors.

"That was in 1816," Eric whispered. He changed: "But by the year 2016, when the stethoscope is 200 years old, no one needs a stethoscope anymore, and the wireless digital device will replace it." "So, the projection screen of the podium shows a set of ECG on the Apple iphone-" as a cardiologist, you can monitor the patient's heart and pulse in real time anywhere in the world, and this has happened to me. ”

Eric Toppe is the first doctor in the United States to move the clinic and the patient's service to the mobile platform, and is also the Terminator of a traditional medical tool.

In his view, this is the future of medical care.

It is also a common aspiration of technology companies ' entrepreneurs and risk investors-a report published in December 2011 by market research firm ABI said: By 2016, the market for wireless Internet health services will reach $1.34 billion trillion, with 30 million mobile devices and "medical LANs" in wireless networks. Connected, wireless medical sensors that can be worn on people will reach 100 million units.

These "sensors" will perceive your body temperature, heartbeat rhythm, pulse, sleep depth, blood pressure and oxygen levels in your body, and even your fetal heart rate--you might have heard such "intimidation" in the past, and if you were to do that, you'd have to implant a chip in your body. Now you know, in fact, everything can be done in a "non-invasive" manner. They may be a heart tracker worn on the wrist, a blood pressure gauge on a belt, or a sleep-quality sensing band that is placed on the body's pulse position.

They are linked to the "interconnected world" of data, which becomes the "Information map" (inforgraphic) that eventually appears on your phone and on your computer screen. On a screen, the different colors, fonts, sizes, and changing line charts record your various vital signs, and they can also generate various electronic reports to be sent to your home doctor's email address. Sometimes, the data can become a fun program and game to urge and supervise your physical activity ...

Some large technology companies have positioned health care as the next business growth point. Wireless chips and overall solutions Qualcomm recently announced the establishment of Qualcomm Life Inc. (QUALCOMM). ), operating the previous Qualcomm Wireless medical (Qualcomm Wireless Tiyatien) department business. Qualcomm will also set up a 100 million-dollar Qualcomm Life fund to support related mobile application innovation and equipment development. Its first product, the 2net platform and hub for wireless medical terminals, is now listed in the United States, mainly for the integration and transmission of medical data information based on cloud computing.

You may have realised that the future of healthcare has been kidnapped by the hottest area of mobile internet. There's nothing wrong with that. When all the assistive medicine, health monitoring and improvement tools are turned into apps on the phone, when they can be presented to you, your doctor, and your health coach at any time with a 3-inch to 10-inch removable screen, the aggregated fitness and health data, the ecosystem collection of applications and smart sensor devices, Transfer and interact through the application programming interface-and provide users with cross-platform and mobile services through a simple control panel. This is a somewhat complicated process that makes health care and health a less complicated and extravagant thing.

For investors, entrepreneurs and people concerned about the future of the wireless Internet, health-related investments look like the most likely way to avoid a bubble in the "mobile internet" sector, amid continued economic decline and growing concern about the investment bubble. The reason is simple, people's real demand for mobile internet, it should not be the one or two "Fruit Ninja" and "Angry Birds" game so simple, but not a few of the search for a nearby stranger to pick up the tool, it should always be a little more urgent and necessary things-you can hardly imagine health and health is not in its list.

In the ABI report, its projected $1.34 billion trillion in wireless health and health market size, 400 million dollars will come from those health and health-related mobile apps, people seem to be more willing to pay for these programs-a good time to use apps and software to change the health and health industry.

San Francisco and Silicon Valley are still the wind vane, where there are investment clubs and incubators dedicated to healthcare start-ups-if your startup projects are related to health care, you may not need to look for the entrepreneurial Godfather Paul Greheum and his famous startup training camp Y Combinator, you may need a rock Tiyatien, an investment fund, start-up training camp, and incubator for mobile healthcare entrepreneurship projects-after you submit your application form, an assessment team of investors and health professionals will be evaluated, with 10 projects each for 5 months of "summer camp training"-they will also look like Y Combinator's seed team, with at least 20,000 dollars in project start-up funding, and provided by rock Tiyatien to provide office space, as well as legal, marketing and other supporting support.

The medical field of Y Combinator also has a strong entrepreneurial mentor and advisor portfolio: Early designers of Facebook's open platform, founder and CEO of Mobile social network path Dave Molin, Dave Morin, Twitter's vice president of engineering, Michael F. Abete (Michael Abbott), and associate founder Linda Dar Evi of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), deputy director of the Department of Medicine and Scott Gottlieb, and Me ) and so on. Rock Tiyatien has also established links with hospitals and medical institutions to ensure that the entrepreneurial team it hatches from is not too far from the market in the first place.

From the first phase of joining Rock Tiyatien, most of them are apparently simple and interesting application developers-such as inside Tracker, a utility that quantifies the vitamins and other nutrients in the body through the sensors, It also gives you advice on optimizing health and sports, and cell Scope, which creates a system that allows you to be diagnosed at home by connecting the smartphone's camera to the Web platform. The company is experimenting with a smart-phone accessory for diagnosing ear infections in children, where American doctors are visiting 30 million times a year for the disease. And pipette allows doctors to use smartphones and tablets throughout the treatment to monitor and educate patients to help patients recover, improve treatment, and find opportunities to prevent health care.

They can even perceive your brain movement: for example, Brainbot, which uses the most advanced results from Harvard and MIT, makes it easy for you to improve your brain's performance, from stress management skills, to better focus, to the effects of ascending meditation-which may be a boon to creative workers. The important thing is that the future of medical care through wireless is not limited to the physiological function of people, it can even affect and improve people's mind and mental health.

These entrepreneurial projects around healthcare are on the road to business success. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of the hottest founder, Twitter and Square in San Francisco, also said to Dorsey, "if there is a next thing that allows mobile data to reach the real physical world directly via the Internet, it must be medical."

Dorsey itself is a hands-on participant in this process. He created two years of square to try to connect People's bank data to the physical world-it pioneered a card reader that allows people to use smartphones and tablets to simply swipe a bank card to accept someone else's bill. The card reader is available free of charge at any Apple retail store in the United States.

But even the invention of Dorsey, which is a similar type of medical service, is not available for free, with an extended access device similar to square, at least $ dozens of trillion-the sleep wristband of the mobile sleep monitor provider, Lark.

Lark's sleep wristband tracks a person's sleep and, at some point, starts shaking on your wrist and silently wakes you up without disturbing the person on the pillow (if there really is one). And all you have to do is turn around and flick the finger on the iphone to turn off the vibrations, and then look at the Lark tracking information: Over the last few hours, you've woken up a few times and when you wake up, it's all reflected in a sleep chart.

"It's a mobile app, but it's also a standalone product." "Lark founder Julia Hu (Julia Hu) told the first financial weekly. Because the Lark Sleep Monitor is only available on the iphone, most of the Lark "Sleep Wristband" is done at Apple Stores. At first glance you would think that Lark is Apple's product-it's simple, curved, designed and even the box's device is exactly the same as Apple's product. Lark tried to negotiate with Apple's huge retail system, but Apple immediately decided to put Lark's wrist strap in a prominent position at Apple's retail store-they had tracked and focused on lark for a long time.

Julia believes that this is because of the uniqueness of the Lark product. "It allows people to understand in the simplest way what it will bring to your sleep quality." She told the first financial weekly. She admits Lark learned a lot about products, design and marketing from Apple. But on the other side, Apple needs a product that expresses its attitude: it's important that Apple focus on people's health.

The reverse push of "future medical care" to mobile internet technology cannot be neglected. For the past two years, people have been looking for ways to extend the Internet's data and services directly to the offline (O2O mode, online to Offline)-group purchase and the "Augmented reality" technology application is the most direct representation. However, the purchase of "offline services" can never really achieve with the Internet data in the full synchronization of time, "augmented reality" technology limited by the media, in the advertising and gaming areas are still in the trial stage. And now you seem to be clear, real-time, synchronous and most practical O2O services come from future medical care-any mobile terminal device that connects to it directly leads to the most specific and vivid offline (offline) entity-your body, heart, skin, and cerebral cortex.

Of course, this is not the whole point of future medical care. The real impact of this change is that it allows you to truly control your own health information. They are no longer sealed in the doctor's stethoscope and the cold machine in the clinic, the data and forms are no longer available only to doctors, or only a limited number of projections and X-rays are uploaded to your hand, and more importantly-focus on your vital signs, index and health status, which can be done anytime, anywhere, or even every minute.

It changes the entire healthcare industry-not just the technical side.

If you have a Tiyatien in reach tool installed on your phone, you may know what will happen in the future. The upcoming venture from Rock Tiyatien offers a "user-generated content" information platform--you can think of it as a yelp or a public comment network in the medical field, if you need to pay for yourself on some medical projects, this platform will give you an idea of the different doctors ' educational backgrounds, experiences, Prices and the credibility of the industry and other information, even you can participate in the "buy" a doctor's medical care and service-outside the social security system of medical care is too expensive.

The "Transparent healthcare market" is a belated thing anywhere--compared to basic services like hotels and restaurants--but now, through mobile Internet tools, it's finally realized.

And the next step is socializing. We are exploring the relationship between health data and community Sprout. It helps parents get support from parents with similar experiences in order to find related resources more quickly. And Omada Tiyatien is the first company to apply the principles of social networking to legal clinical treatment, which is used to develop a diabetes prevention program that not only tracks the individual's health index and pathology, but also validates the results. Importantly, the data and progress will also be incorporated into a "patient community" to achieve centralized tracking and prevention, as well as the effectiveness of mutual stimulation.

But like any service that makes data flexible, ubiquitous, and even socially, it raises concerns about privacy-something that seems more sensitive and deadly to vital-sign data and healthy privacy. "In fact, in the process of linking the data to the human body, we have concurrent research on privacy protection, data control and information security," said Frank Moss, director of new medical research at MIT's Media Institute, "Franche Moss, a technical issue, It is also a social and ethical issue. ”

Mobile apps for detecting heart rate

With a mobile phone app, you can measure your pulse and breath by detecting subtle changes in skin tones, and all you have to do is hold your index finger on the smartphone's camera for a few minutes.

The new application was developed by researchers at the Worcester Institute of Technology. Because traditional external sensors are expensive and cumbersome, they are trying to develop smartphone apps that can record basic health information without the need for external sensors.

Older persons are the direct beneficiaries of this technology, and they can monitor their own life characteristics at home or with the assistance of a nursing institution. The application's lead researcher, Guixian, once showed another effect: "This app seems to work on the earlobe, so the phone can even measure your heart rate while you're on the phone." ”

The principle of application relies on the combination of the green light emitted by the camera and the white light emitted by the flash. But these parts are not the same on different phone models, so the tricky question is how to get the app to be used on different types of smartphones, and researchers are still working on it.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)