From a glance at Twitter this morning it’s quite obvious Leslie Saxon MD has totally rocked TEDMed 2012 in Washington DC with her “Can we get 8 billion heartbeats on speed dial” talk that introduced EveryHeartBeat.org – a public mHealth data collection project that intends to leverage sensors like the Alivecor iPhone ECG case and Azumio’s Heartrate sensing app to transform the way we access healthcare from a patient pulled to a provider pushed service delivery model.

The video isn’t posted yet but you can check out the website and it’s already making a steady stream of quality news coverage (as I see them I’ll update this list so let me know if you spot anymore articles):

DeviceTalk: Telling Health Stories Through Mobile Data Collection

Fast Company: Using Big Data To Predict Your Potential Heart Problems

iMedical Apps: CAN WE GET 8-BILLION HEARTBEATS ON SPEED DIAL?

Technology Review: Would you Join the Facebook of Medicine

It all reminded me of when I first saw Leslie presenting in this TEDxUSC talk, which is still well worth a watch:

I remember this so well because although my interest in healthcare technologies differs from Dr Saxon’s (I think there is a bigger near term opportunity introducing technology BEFORE patients meet with Doctors) in her talk there is an brilliantly articulated explanation of why from a Doctor’s perspective we should consider it a mistake to not automatically provide patients with documentation of their visit to a Doctor:

“That may be a nuturing physician but I think being in a room with a patient that is anxious, that is unclothed, in many ways they don’t come with their mothers and if they do come with their mothers their mothers are more nervous than they are, and trying to impart some information to them in that very intense environment and then locking that information up within me, who is very difficult to access and never letting it go anywhere where it can be vetted, or expressed, or get further iterated is a big mistake”

Thankfully there are easy to implement digital tools that can help us introduce this into clinical environments. If you care about patients I think it’s not just a MISTAKE to ignore these but it’s also rather uncaring.