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Health & Fitness

Empowering the patient through m-health

"Time and health are two precious assets that we don't recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted." The promise of m-health lies in the potential to replete those valuable assets.

We rarely think about our central nervous system as we try to cope with our hectic lives. It is only when the first diagnosis of a neurological disease seeps into a patient’s mind that reality hits home. We are now patients who must learn to understand the complicated minuet of molecules, abnormal neural networks and brain structures that may be associated with different disease states. Whether one is diagnosed in the early, chronic or advanced phases of Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis or any other illness, the path towards remission, fewer relapses or delaying the advance of an incurable disease is covered with stumbling blocks. Knowledge of the diseases and support from caregivers are important in the ongoing battle to reverse the proportion of neurological disorders, estimated to be up to 10.9% of the global disease burden (2005).

 Ask Meredith Vieira, the TV personality. She is a caregiver to her husband, Richard Cohen, who has battled the autoimmune condition, multiple sclerosis, for most of his adult life. Like many other patients, wishing to supplement knowledge obtained in the doctor’s office, caregivers like Vieira may turn to Google to learn about a neurodegenerative condition that affects the lives of approximately 400,000 Americans. Ask Glen Campbell’s (famed for country songs like “Wichita Lineman” and “The Rhinestone Cowboy”) family. Some celebrities may have their names associated with a disease. Think of Lou Gehrig, the sports star, who played seventeen seasons in major league baseball with the New York Yankees. His deterioration from the “world’s number one batsman” (according to a 1936 Time magazine story) to a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota is a matter of historical record. ALS  affects about 5600 people each year, can strike anyone and the average life expectancy of a patient has been estimated to be up to 5 years.  The facts and figures for Alzheimer’s Disease, the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, are even worse and underscore the battle faced by Glen Campbell and millions of Americans. Unpaid care provided by 15 million Americans to individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias has been valued at $210 billion.

How does any given patient or caregiver cope with these complicated conditions? Part of the answer may lie in acquiring more information from accredited societies and entering into an active health-and-wellness collaboration with their physicians. Digital health technologies represent opportunities to tailor treatments to the empowered patient, especially in an era where the emphasis is placed on earlier diagnosis or prevention of disease.

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Mobile health or m-health, i.e. the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices, could save developed countries $400 billion in health costs in 2017. Medical data such as weight, blood pressure and cholesterol levels can already be captured with applications (apps) like Microsoft’s Healthvault mobile app. Neurotrack, a startup built on years of neuroscience research, says it can identify patients at risk for developing Alzheimer’s years before the onset of the condition. At the opposite end of the disease spectrum, cancers such as neuroendocrine tumors could possibly be managed with the aid of an iphone app released by Novartis, one of the pharmaceutical companies providing digital healthcare solutions to professionals and patients. Proteus Digital Health has adopted a different approach (according to a Time magazine article), developing a microscopic sensor powered by stomach fluid that could be swallowed as a pill and then relay information to a smartphone about the particular effects of a drug. The same company has also developed HeliusTM, a healthcare solutions tool to connect families and patients.

M-health opportunities have to be weighed against the challenges of providing up-to-date, continuous access, education, and outcome metrics to all users (see New York Times article).  

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“Time and health are two precious assets that we don’t recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted (Dennis Waitley).”  The promise of m-health lies in the potential to replete those valuable assets. 

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