Going to the doctor
In a 2004 directive by then-President Bush, a goal was set to have interoperable electronic healthcare records in place by 2014. In 2009, the Healthcare Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was signed into law to promote the adoption and meaningful use of health technology. According to statistics provided in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article [1]. there has been a monumental increase in the number of medical applications available to health professionals as well as to the individual. The article reports that the number of unique mobile devices (worldwide) that access medical applications increased from one million in 2011 to close to four million in 2013 (and this number has certainly increased since then).
Since the introduction of the HITECH Act, more healthcare companies are designing methods to access data that is collected by personal health applications like those of a Fitbit or other web-or phone-based applications for use by medical professionals. In addition, more and more people are going to the web for information to help them seeing a trend by healthcare organizations to provide nursing staff and patients with recommendations about what websites can be trusted, or to provide their own web services to help the patients understand a diagnosis or test result. As these trends continue, where do they take us?
These two pars can be read on “Social Machines: The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity” by James Hendler and Alice M. Mulvehill
[1] Landro, Laura, “The Doctor’s Team Will See You Now”, Wall Street Journal, February 17, 2014
