I was recently interviewed for a story on how smartphones can improve healthcare.  Here is a link to the article in the Globe and Mail.

Here are my predictions for what we might see in the future.  Of course this is entirely dependent on entrepreneurs pursuing such opportunities. 

Monitoring - in the future, the smart phone will be a smart health monitor instead of needing single purpose medical devices (e.g. heart rate monitors). Smart sensors and smart bandages will monitor patient health, communicate with smartphone health management applications that transmit data to health care professionals. Patients will have a health dashboard that shows them (and their doctors) relevant indicators and warnings. Instead of going to the health care facility to be monitored, patients will be monitored on a full-time basis.

Field Management - the smartphone is a computer and, in the future, they will be used by home health care professionals in the field to route patient calls (GPS enabled), field reports (sent to the patient record in the cloud), and billing. This will eliminate the need for paper forms and/or post-care reporting on a PC.

Drug Management - in the future, drug/medication management will be controlled through the smartphone. There will be a smartphone application that tracks prescriptions all the way from doctor to pharmacist to patient. Smart packaging will communicate with the smartphone to track dosing.

Patient Information - social networking and user-generated content will meet mobile as the smartphone becomes a health care reference device, putting health care information in the hands of the patient.

Medical Professional Resource - in the pocket of the health care professional, the smartphone will contain applications and resources to replace traditional reference materials (books) and web surfing giving practitioners access to the latest data.

In short, the smartphone, with its geolocation capabilities (knowing who you are and where you are) and always-on, always connected status is ripe to revolutionize health care delivery and patient management.