As someone diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at the young age of 5, healthcare has always been at the forefront of my life. I cannot imagine a time when I did not have diabetes. That being said, I have been able to follow the advancements that technology and healthcare mobility have made with regard to the disease. I have lived through having to prick my finger as well as having to take insulin injections every few hours, or whenever I wanted to eat, in order to take care of myself.
Since this was always present for as far back as I can remember, I never saw it as an inconvenience but simply as a necessary part of life. The first biggest development for me was the introduction of the insulin pump which allowed users to wear a device that held units of insulin, dramatically decreasing the number of daily injections required. Next came devices that allowed diabetics to continuously monitor their blood sugar throughout the day without constant finger pricks. Users could now couple a pump to a mobile device to monitor how their blood sugar was fluctuating throughout the day and make quick adjustments to ensure it would never run too high or too low. Today we live in an age where companies actively work to allow diabetics to live a life akin to those without the disease. It is a lot harder to tell if someone has diabetes, thanks to the sheer number of advancements we have seen from not only from medical companies but from technology companies as well. Apple has made strides to ensure the next watch version includes a glucose monitor.
Ideas like this always seemed like science fiction growing up but now that I have witnessed first-hand how far we have come, I am eager to utilize these advancements in my everyday. Though diabetes plays a major role in my life, it is comforting to note all the amazing breakthroughs mobility has provided the healthcare industry.
The world can only benefit from improving the bond between healthcare and technology. Companies understand the need people have for monitoring their health through mobile devices or wearable technologies—from FitBit watches to apps like HelloMD. People will continue to utilize the latest technologies to find comfort from whatever ails them. It is critical the healthcare industry keeps pace with this demand in order to continue producing groundbreaking products. As a result, the entire healthcare industry is adapting—an industry so used to managing everything through paper and counting on a subservient, compliant patient base suddenly must get accustomed to electronic records and patients who believe they have diagnosed themselves even before visiting the doctor, thanks to something they saw online.
Moving forward, health care providers must ensure they have the plans in place to accommodate new advances and also the confidence to challenge them should they turn out to be redundant, inconsequential, erroneous or even dangerous.
By the same token, Tech companies must understand breaking into the healthcare field will never be an easy task, from being HIPAA compliant to ensuring information security. But new innovations in healthcare mobility can bring life-changing results for millions of people, including myself. Having worked with everyone from the biggest pharmaceutical companies to the smallest new Healthcare startups, we at Propelics understand what it takes to produce groundbreaking mobile tech for the Healthcare industry. We are eager to see how the industry evolves over the next decade and can only image the advances we may see in the very near future. If you’d like to discuss the role technology plays in Healthcare or you are a Healthcare company that would like to discuss taking advantage of all that mobile technology has to offer, please reach out. We’d love to talk.
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