Take Tunstall’s RTX3371 Wireless Telehealth Monitor, for example. The device just cleared the U.S. FDA and uses a slower GPRS cellular radio to receive and send data.

Vital signs are wirelessly collected from other compatible devices like weight scales and blood pressure units; the stats can then be forwarded on to doctors or hospitals by using the integrated cellular radio. As if that weren’t enough, the RTX3371 offers voice functionality for questionnaires on how a patient is feeling.

I still want to see this done by just one device… my smartphone.

But it struck me.

Which of the two phrases in the title should be the one we focus on as we move forward into pushing the healthcare conversation forward?

Clinically Relevant (Clinical Relevance)

or

Patient Centered

Does it make a difference?  Would it change our behaviours?  Will it affect our focus?

If we use one more than the other, will this affect our outcomes in transforming healthcare?  (Oops, you are right, the goal is not to transform healthcare but to improve patient outcomes.   In the process of improving outcomes it just happens that the delivery of health care services will also be transformed.)

I do believe it makes a difference… but need to think through it some more.   Please let us know what you think.

I notice a need for my own sake and sanity to try and understand the different terms and what they mean to me as a consumer of health services (i.e. patient).

Starting my research by reading this paper – “Medicine 2.0: Social Networking, Collaboration, Participation, Apomediation, and Openness” by Gunther Eysenbach.  Here is the abstract to start you out:

In a very significant development for eHealth, a broad adoption of Web 2.0 technologies and approaches coincides with the more recent emergence of Personal Health Application Platforms and Personally Controlled Health Records such as Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, and Dossia. “Medicine 2.0” applications, services, and tools are defined as Web-based services for health care consumers, caregivers, patients, health professionals, and biomedical researchers, that use Web 2.0 technologies and/or semantic web and virtual reality approaches to enable and facilitate specifically 1) social networking, 2) participation, 3) apomediation, 4) openness, and 5) collaboration, within and between these user groups. The Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) publishes a Medicine 2.0 theme issue and sponsors a conference on “How Social Networking and Web 2.0 changes Health, Health Care, Medicine, and Biomedical Research”, to stimulate and encourage research in these five areas.

We’ll touch base later.

Having said all that, it still quite surprising and shocking how hospitals have not opened their doors more widely to mobile phone use inside their facilities. However we see some progress being made:

Hospitals in England have been told to consider allowing “more liberal use of mobile phones”, following new guidance issued today by the Department of Health.

Under the new guidelines areas of hospitals where mobile phone use is banned could become the exception rather than the norm. Bans will remain in place in areas where critical care equipment is susceptible to electro magnetic interference.

The latest guidance says NHS trusts “should consider giving patients, staff and visitors the widest possible use of mobile phones, where it doesn’t interfere with equipment, the privacy of others or cause a nuisance”.

Although the main reason for these changes in England are not for the same reasons we stated above:

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said: “Close support and comfort from loved ones when you are poorly in hospital is essential. Mobiles phones are commonplace in everyday life these days and people have told us that they’d like to be able to use their phones more in hospital to keep in touch.”

Bradshaw added: “That’s why we’re keen to encourage sensible use in NHS hospitals where it is safe to do so, in addition to other services offered in hospitals such bedside payphones, TV and internet access.”

It appears to be more about the patient experience than on the improvement of care… but both are really one and the same so it is good all around.

One question still remains… when will see hospitals adopt mobile technologies more widely?  Will the iPhone do it?   With Palm sinking rapidly and physicians no longer able to defend the ailing platform, BlackBerry may have a chance to win hospitals over especially if they go with the enterprise pitch.  However, on an individual basis I am sure that the iPhone stands a better chance of winning the hearts and minds of caregivers.  We shall see.

**An extremely similar version of this entry has also been posted on our other site.