It may be just a small aspect of ehealth, but when a national financial daily like the Australian Financial Review puts up a teaser for a forthcoming feature on the topic, you can bet the idea is beginning to catch on.
At the top of page two of today’s edition, there’s a picture of a woman in a track suit who seems to be thoroughly wired up and monitored, with a heading that says “An app a day … the ehealth revolution”, pointing to Friday’s issue of Boss magazine.
We doubt that they’ll be the same list as this one. Or this one. Possibly it will be more like this.
It’s obviously going to be an advance on another financial journal, The Economist, whose Intelligence Unit published a white paper titled 2030 – The future of ehealth in Europe, without, as 3G Doctor points out in its blog, a single mention of “mobile networks, mobiles devices or the patient video opportunity that they will support”.
As that blog points out, “In the list of ‘experts’ that were interviewed for the research there isn’t one member from the newest trillion dollar industry – nor the device that has already cannibalised or completely disrupted nearly every other tech or service industry,” noting that “I would be completely amazed if the author of this report has ever had an iPhone, as after more than 10 years with a ‘proper’ smartphone in my pocket I find it inconcieveable that in 2030 European citizens will be carrying a ‘credit card’ as part of their healthcare service, registered doctors will still be using stethoscopes and remote doctors will be having their faces being projected onto screens attached to surgical robots”.
