What’s going to have the most impact on our health in the next 5 – 10 years?

Brian Dolan reports from the Wireless Health event in Boston on IBM’s Chief Healthcare Officer Janet Marchibroda’ keynote:

“I’m not going to spend time on wireless health or telehealth but more so on the policy environment… ARRA …meaningful use …federal government …electronic health records …only about 4% of healthcare facilities have an electronic health system …only about 13% have a basic functional system …about 1.5% of U.S. hospitals have a “comprehensive” electronic health records system …etc …etc …Meaningful Use will drive dollars in this industry for the next five to ten years

I found it exactly the type of talk that could dispirit innovators in Healthcare from thinking about mHealth opportunities so i made the following image to show the convergence of technology on popular mobile phones devices in the LAST 5 years:

5 years of mobile device evolution

In 2009 within a total weight of only 150 grams we already have:
> 3.5″ 360×640 pixel TFT 24 bit Color Resistive Touch Screen AND Tilt/Slide out QWERTY keyboard
> Symbian OS v9.4
> ARM 11, 434 MHz CPU
> Connectivity via WLAN, HSDPA and 850/900/1800/1900/2100 GSM/WCDMA Bands
> Integrated A-GPS/Nokia Maps 2.0
> N-Gage Gaming Platform, Stereo RM RDS Radio, Visual Radio, TV Out, Still image Editor
> 5 Megapixel camera with dual LED flash, automatic geotagging of images and videos, Auto Exposure, Auto Focus, Carl Zeiss Optics, Exposure Compensation, Self Timer, Sequence Mode
> Double Tap and XYZ Accelerometers, Ambient Light, Magnetic North(Compass), Magnetometer XYZ, Rotation, Orientation, Proximity Sensors
> FOTA Firmware over the Air
> HTML and XHTML over TCP/IP Browser + Flash Lite 3.0 including Video
> 30 fps Video Recording, Video Call, Video Editor, Video Player, Video Recorder, Video Ringtones, Video Sharing, Video Streaming

Now imagine how Moores Law will continue to transform the global competitive personal mobile device market over the next 5 years and then compare that to the rate of pace of change in our expensive regional healthcare IT systems…

I think you’ll agree that no matter how many billions the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act spends innovating within a broken healthcare system… an approach that seeks to serve and satisfy patients is going to be much more productive.

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