Picture it, about 300 years into the future. Humans have finally left the confines of Earth and are roaming the galaxy. Upon encountering a new planet they decide to send an away team. On the planet, unfortunately, one of the team members is exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. The accompanying medical officer pulls out his medical tricorder. This device not only can scan the person to check vitals and cause of illness or injury, it also sends this important information back to the central computer on the starship for possible therapeutic advice, past medical records for the individual, and it collects data for future care.
Ok, by now I am sure you can tell that I am a Trekkie. A proud one! But does Gene Roddenberry paint a picture that far off the mark, or could this be a possibility one day?
Lets bring our timeline back to January 13, 2015. At work I stopped to talk to a coworker. She proudly showed me a new device that she had purchased that tracked her steps, calories burned and some other data was collected. Ok, so this isn’t as sophisticated as Star Trek’s medical tricorder, but it is just the beginning of a new frontier called mobile health or mHealth.
Mobile health is still in its infancy, however it is growing swiftly. With the proliferation of smart phones and tablet devices, we are now able to take more technology with us. As a matter of fact, according to Howard Larkin (2011), app stores for many of the popular smart devices, collectively held over 17,000 medical related apps in 2011 (Larkin, 2011, p. 24). Nowadays you can get apps that track your running times and speeds, apps that monitor the way you sleep and even apps that act as your own personal trainer in the gym. And these are just the consumer apps. Milosevic, Milenkovic and Jovanov (2013) showed us, how UAH had created an app that allowed them monitor the movement of people with a “fall risk”, these being named sTUG and mWheelness (Milosevic et al, 2013, p. 47). These apps were used in specific studies to gather information for care of future patients.
This new way of gathering information and providing therapy is important because it is paving the way to collecting mountains of valuable data that can be used for future treatments and preventative care. There are some cases where it is being used to help people in remote parts of the world, with little access to healthcare professionals. It is helping to prevent sedentary lifestyles for some and becoming the first line of defense against illness. What about the future, you ask?
The future looks bright for these technologies. Just recently, with the release of iPhone 5s in 2013, Apple included a new microchip specifically designed for “health applications.” There has also been a surge of wearable devices to create a BAN for those who want it. What about Roddenberry’s tricorder? Well according to Adam Pliskin (2014), Google, taking a cue from Star Trek, intended to create a system like the medical tricorder of that television series (Pliskin, 2014).
How is that for “going where no man has gone before?”
References:
Larkin, H. (2011). mHealth. Hospitals & Health Networks, 85(4), 22-6, 2. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/865328282?accountid=14552
Milosevic, M., Milenkovic, A., & Jovanov, E. (2013). mHealth @ UAH: Computing infrastructure for mobile health and wellness monitoring. XRDS, 20(2), pp.43-49. DOI: 10.1145/2539269
Pliskin, A. (2014). Google X Aims To Build ‘Star Trek’ Tricorder And Change Healthcare. Elite Daily. Retrieved from http://elitedaily.com/news/technology/google-x-building-tricorder/834907/
