Tag: smartphone apps

OM in the News: Your Smartphone Will See You Now

New smartphone tools, like blood pressure monitors, aim to give more power to patients
New smartphone tools, like blood pressure monitors, aim to give more power to patients

Over the past decade, smartphones have radically changed many aspects of our everyday lives, from banking to shopping to entertainment. Medicine is next, writes Dr. Eric Topol in The Wall Street Journal (Jan.10-11, 2015). With the smartphone revolution, an increasingly powerful new set of tools—from attachments that can diagnose an ear infection or track heart rhythms to an app that can monitor mental health—can reduce our use of doctors, cut costs, speed up the pace of care and give more power to patients.

Let’s say you have a rash that you need examined. Today, you can snap a picture of it and download an app to process the image. Within minutes, a computer algorithm can text you your diagnosis. That message could include next steps, such as recommending a topical ointment or a visit to a dermatologist for further assessment. Smartphones already can be used to take blood-pressure readings or even do an EKG.

Now, at any time of day or night, you can get a secure video consultation with a doctor via smartphone at the same cost (about $30-$40) as the typical copay charge. Deloitte has forecast that virtual physician visits (replacing physical office visits) will soon become the norm– that as many as 1 in 6 doctor visits were already virtual in 2014. Even bigger changes are in the works. Using wearable wireless sensors, you can use your smartphone to generate your own medical data, including measuring your blood-oxygen and glucose levels, blood pressure and heart rhythm. And if you’re worried that your child may have an ear infection, a smartphone attachment will let you perform an easy eardrum exam that can rapidly diagnose the problem without a trip to the pediatrician.

“We’re often told that the U.S. faces a big looming shortage of physicians,” writes Dr. Topol. “The expansion of DIY medical capabilities certainly challenges that notion: We may end up not having a physician shortage at all.”

Classroom discussion questions:
1. How can the smartphone be used in other service industries?
2. Why is this an important operations tool?

OM in the News: Turning a Smartphone into a Medical Device

When we talk about new product development in Chapter 5, we can use the smartphone as an example of the platform for a new industry–mobile health care apps. Businessweek (Oct.2-9, 2011) reports on a new wave of smartphone apps and attachments that may “make health care fundamentally different than it used to be”. For example, in the past few months, products that turn a phone into a blood pressure measuring cuff, a CT-scan viewer, and other devices have received FDA approval. By 2015, 30% of smartphone users will be using mobile health products, says one consultant.

Here is one example: When Dr. Brian Froelke joined emergency responders to the Joplin, Missouri tornado, he brought a hairbrush-sized attachment to his Toshiba smartphone. The device, by Mobisante Corp., converts the phone into a pocket ultrasound machine. He used it to examine a pregnant woman who came into a temporary hospital complaining of stomach pain. “It was useful to reassure the mom that the baby didn’t have any obvious problems”, Froelke  says. Mobisante is in talks with the US Army, which is interested in using the portable device to diagnose wounded soldiers in the field.

At $7,495, Froelke’s attachment was also less expensive than a hospital ultrasound machine that can cost $100,000. It’s “easily the best bang for your buck”, says an ER doctor who reviewed it for Emergency Physicians Monthly. By reducing costs for insurers and medical providers, mobile health-focused startups hope to grab a slice of the $273 billion medical equipment market from giants such as GE and Philips. “Big companies of tomorrow are the small companies of today”, adds the CEO of a firm that makes a $129 blood pressure cuff that attaches to iPhones.

Discussion questions:

1. Why are these new devices are important to OM managers.

2. How are these devices going to impact medical practice here and abroad.