Are Smartphones Starting a Boom In DIY Medicine? 111
An anonymous reader writes "How are you using smartphones and other portable devices to take charge of your medical care? The NY Times has an article about attachments to the iPhone for tracking blood sugar and blood pressure. There are also glorified web cams that take pictures of your ear drum, teeth or eyes to save you a trip to the doctor's. Some people are tracking the changes in their moles with an iPhone App. Is this the beginning of Med 2.0?" Odd as it sounds, I was able to be more quickly and reliably diagnosed with Lyme disease last fall because I'd taken some pictures on my phone of the lesion I'd wrongly thought was the result of a spider bite. Any camera would have worked, but I had my camera-equipped phone with me, rather than any other kind.
Self-Treatment =/= Doctor (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as people don't like/trust doctors, or paying the high bills, there will always be serious interest in self-diagnosis. Smartphones do nothing to add to it, aside from allowing a portable search engine to plug symptoms into. Instant gratification.
On the plus side, this'll likely increase the amount of reported deaths caused by self-treatment, because "ZOMG Technology is EVOL!"
Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as people don't like/trust doctors, or paying the high bills, there will always be serious interest in self-diagnosis. Smartphones do nothing to add to it, aside from allowing a portable search engine to plug symptoms into. Instant gratification.
On the plus side, this'll likely increase the amount of reported deaths caused by self-treatment, because "ZOMG Technology is EVOL!"
It's a boon to hypochondriacs - they'll find a horrible ailment for every ache, pain, disorientation, discoloration, etc.
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Munchausen's by proxy by iPhone.
Maybe Munchausan by anonymous proxy:
.. up ... UP - ah my left testical has exploded!
Amonymous coward to health forum:
I've rubbed the cream on like you sugested, but my balls are swelling up
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munchausen by tor
munchausen by onion router
munchausen by bittorrent
hey this is fun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchausen_syndrome_by_proxy [wikipedia.org]
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...right, because doctors are infallible, and never make mistakes. They also aren't prone to prescription med payola, or general self interest.
It would be less cynical stance to claim that this will reduce malpractice suits, rather than focus on self inflicted death.
BTW, while we're on such grim topics, where the assisted suicide device/app?
You have given us the expectation of the first Lawsuit against a telecom company because the mobile phone run over their network gave someone poor advice which resulted in their illness, complication, death or zombification.
Well done.
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Facebook is the assisted-suicide App, actually. It's the Anti-Suicide Hotline, where you can always guarantee someone'll be glad to tell you how your life sucks.
Or /.
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because doctors are infallible, and never make mistakes.
No we are certainly fallible and mistakes do happen. But since we are professionals we tend to make a lot fewer mistakes than the average person. You start getting the hang of what you're doing around your 5,000th 3am patient.
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Assisted Suicide App (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Assisted Suicide App (Score:5, Funny)
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Those are already out there, they go by MANY fine brands...Glock, Beretta, Smith&Wesson....etc.
Just put in mouth, pull delivery device (trigger) and your assisted suicide is quick and simple.
Oh...you may need, depending on your model, to make sure that the safety is off, if it has a safety.
Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor (Score:5, Funny)
Suicide by trebuchet!
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Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet. I predict from this trend will rise cheap, bluetooth enabled medical sensors of various types.
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Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor (Score:5, Interesting)
"As long as people don't like/trust doctors"
Nice corporate line. My wife had Lyme and went from doctor to doctor before they finally referred her to specialist care which confirmed what she'd already diagnosed!
Doctors are not interchangeable, have a tiny slice of time to work with patients (your auto mechanic has more time per car by far!), and are under constant pressure.
Computer-aided diagnosis can be a huge boon to a public who can't afford medical care or who are under-served by existing options.
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Medicine is largely heuristics as the physician is matching the symptoms the patient has to a diagnosis, and patients' symptoms are rarely ever "textbook" symptoms. There is a lot of overlap of symptoms and history between many different conditions early on in the illness. People are great at heuristics. Computers are awful at heuristics but are excellent at data storage, algorithmic sorting, and data retrieval. The reason the Jeopardy computer did well is because it was asked to retrieve data. You entered
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No. Computer search algorithms work by taking a large amount of possible matches and then reducing that number by applying filters. If you had a person come in with two days of fever and a cough, the computer would list every condition that has fever and cough as a possibility. It would then recommend a bunch of tests to try and eliminate conditions from the "possible conditions" list until only one remains. If you want to talk about extremely expensive, that's how you get there- go down a list of potential
Re:Self-Treatment =/= Doctor (Score:5, Interesting)
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Please have your wife talk to her doctor about a blood test for vitamin D deficiency (which is related to the immune system). Related:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/news-archive/2010/vitamin-d-regulatory-hormone-of-immunity-and-inflammation/ [vitamindcouncil.org]
Please also look into the work of Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who is his first "Healthy Times" newsletter has an article about people coming into his office related to Lyme disease and feeling much better after they improve what they eat (much more vegetables and fruits and omega-
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your auto mechanic has more time per car by far!
Your auto mechanic gets paid by the hour, at the time of service. Your doctor gets paid per patient, several months later.
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Your mechanic gets paid FLAT RATE, based on a flat rate manual which has estimates of time required (I'm a mechanic).
He/she has plenty of incentive to kick out the work quickly, but if a broken car comes back the mechanic is often blamed. Not so the physician!
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Tracking blood pressure and blood sugar is not self diagnosis. It's really fantastic if you already are diagnosed with something and need to keep track of those numbers in the first place, especially if you combine it with food and medical logs. When I had gestational diabetes, I was able to send reports from a diabetes website to my midwife, so she could keep track of my blood sugars and diets with every visit, to make sure I didn't need to start medication, and remain diet controlled. I was also able t
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It'll probably save a few people who would otherwise get no healthcare at all.
Re:Bad idea (Score:2)
I cannot even tell you how much of a bad idea this is. I am graduating medical school in two months, and am barely starting to feel "a little" comfortable making a judgment on my own, only a fraction of the time. I will need to accumulate ALL of the experience that 3 years of 80+hour work weeks of residency can give me. And I am a cocky bastard at that. I just realize that the difference between a doctor (especially one trained at a high-volume top-tier teaching hospital) and a civilian is. The gap is so la
Really bad idea from bad people (Score:3)
All the anecdotal evidence posted as a result of this one article, and you still can't see the forest for the trees.
I'd love it if a caring, smart, motivated professional would take the time to diagnose my ills when I have them - I truly would.
The problem is that the professionals are neither motivated, smart, nor professional. Let me break that down for you in easy pieces:
Mod parent up (Score:4, Informative)
Sad, but true...
And it gets even worse:
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx [drfuhrman.com]
"Interventional cardiology and cardiovascular surgery is basically a scam based on a misunderstanding of the nature of heart disease. Searching for and treating obstructive plaque does not address the areas of the coronary vascular tree most likely to rupture and cause heart attacks. If there was never another CABG or angioplasty performed or stent placed, patients with heart disease would be better off. Doctors would be forced to educate our citizens that their heart disease risk is determined by what they place on their forks. Millions of lives would be dramatically extended. To abandon the theory of stretching and cutting out areas with plaque would shut down interventional cardiology, nearly all cardiovascular surgery, and many suppliers of the biotechnology. In many cases, interventional cardiology is the major income generator to hospitals. The ending of this ill-conceived, out-dated and ineffective technology would dramatically downsize hospitals in the United States and free up over $100 billion annually in medical care costs. Besides being ineffective, interventional cardiology places the responsibility in the hands of the doctor and not the patients. When patients finally realize they must take control of their heart problems with aggressive dietary modifications (and when needed medications for temporary periods) we will essentially solve the health crisis in America.
The sad thing is surgical interventions and medications are the foundation of modern cardiology and both are relatively ineffective compared to nutritional excellence. My patients routinely reverse their heart disease, and no longer have vulnerable plaque or high blood pressure, so they do not need medical care, hospitals or cardiologists anymore. The problem is that in the real world cardiac patients are not even informed that heart disease is predictably reversed with nutritional excellence. They are not given the opportunity to choose and just corralled into these surgical interventions.
Trying to figure out how to pay for ineffective and expensive medicine by politicians will never be a real solution. People need to know they do not have to have heart disease to begin with, and if they get it, aggressive nutrition is the most life-saving intervention. And it is free."
And:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science [pdfernhout.net]
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)"
Much of the path to better health was known 100 years ago by the natural hygienists. See:
http://soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm [soilandhealth.org]
"At this time in 1927, Dr. Shelton is already being harassed in his Hygienic practice by advocates of The Medical Mentality and by the police. In 1927, Dr. Shelton is jailed for the first time for "practicing medicine without a license" and is fined $100.oo. This same year of 1927, a second arrest takes place, under similar circumstances and with charges of $300.oo. His money is so tight this second time, he has to borrow to be released. Also,
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...and yet many of "you" (doctors) will protect your turf, put down those "soccer-moms" that know their own kids better than anyone else and have a stronger drive to care for them than anyone else as well. Kind of sad. Here's what's really sad-- my child had a malignant brain tumor. We took him to a nurse practitioner who nailed it right away. I am very thankful because I've met a number of parents who's children had the same (or worse) symptoms and yet their doctors knew so much more than the parents a
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I couldn't mod this comment high enough, had I the points. Unfortunately, cynic that I am, I'm going to assume that the bulk of people doing the self-diagnosing are either already hypochondriacs or susceptible to becoming one.
I've simply seen too many instances (personally and professionally, both IT and elsewhere) where self-diagnosis has caused even greater difficulties, to the point where it's best left to an independent set of eyes.
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The other problem is the time ratio. They examine you for 30 min
I typed in my symptoms and it says (Score:5, Funny)
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
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I typed in my symptoms and my iPhone says that I have:
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
I think there's some huck^H^H^H^Hexpert selling a device which will save you, but it requires 10 easy payments.
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Doctor, we've got a 404, Stat!
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Wouldn't a 503 be more appropriate? Also, stat can be translated as "now!" so you're supposed to say what you want first like "We need a WiFi hotspot, stat". It's not capitalized, it's just a normal adverb (from latin statim). And with this much nitpicking in one post, I'm bound to have typo'd something...
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I typed in my symptoms and my iPhone says that I have:
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
Well, many ER's these days do have open wireless access for people stuck in the waiting room. I'd just advise NOT checking in.
That might hurt.
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I typed in my symptoms and my iPhone says that I have:
Internet Connectivity Problems
Oh no, do I have to go to the emergency room??!!!!?
Well, many ER's these days do have open wireless access for people stuck in the waiting room. I'd just advise NOT checking in.
That might hurt.
A local hospital charges your for checking in. You could be directed to X-Ray, but hop in your car and go home, still find a bill in your post box within two weeks.
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Just sit in the waiting room typing on your computer. Nobody is going to gainsay you - you're 'waiting for someone'.
But never, ever check in if you can at all help it....
DIY medicine started a lot earlier than smartphone (Score:2)
On a slightly more serious note, the interwebs and all its tubes have increased the ease of access to medical information and I certainly hope have improved the quality of care patients can get jus
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DIY medicine started a lot earlier than smartphone. My friend got hit by a boom while sailing once and split his forehead. His dad grabbed the duct tape conveniently aboard (they were far from a hospital) and *PRESTO*, wound sealed. It healed with less of a scar than my finger I got stitches for.
On a slightly more serious note, the interwebs and all its tubes have increased the ease of access to medical information and I certainly hope have improved the quality of care patients can get just by being more educated.
I use Super Glue on cuts all the time. Faster than a bandage. Also good when I get one of those damn split fingernails, just glue the sucker back together and I'm back picking my n... picking apples like a pro.
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Super glue is amazing it's true I use it as well. Although for cuts that are likely to get infected liquid bandage would probably be better- it has a disinfectant in with the glue. #1 in my first aid kit :)
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I use Super Glue on cuts all the time.
There are 'medical grade' super glues.
They use different chemicals that are non-toxic and less irritating to the skin.
Of course, like a camera, the best type of liquid bandage is the one you have with you.
P.S. Don't buy any liquid bandaid with oil of cloves in it. The smell is awful and stays on you for far too long.
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Actually, medical grade super glues are EXACTLY the same stuff you get at the hardware store, just much more expensive because they're 'medical'.
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I have used the hardware store stuff myself and had no problems whatsoever. It was painless and flexible. I have seen interviews where surgeons admitted that they just use the hardware store stuff (though that was when it was fairly new).
I can't see a good reason to pay more for the so called 'medical grade' stuff.
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And things like that are why people end up with no medical care at all.
Awareness (Score:5, Interesting)
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Look, knowledgeable patients are helpful, no matter how they get the knowledge. And 'smartphones' are really just a ubiquitous hardware standard for the several devices that have been available to the general public for years - BP cuffs, glucometers, pulse oximeters and a few more. It isn't going to 'revolutionize' anything. I will 'evolutionalize' (huh, spell checker doesn't like that one) things. Just like having automatic blood pressure cuffs so you didn't have to figure out what Kortkoff sounds [wikipedia.org] were
Spider bite! (Score:2)
the lesion I'd wrongly thought was the result of a spider bite
Now that could have been waaaay cooler than Lyme desease.
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The spider wasn't radioactive.
Taking a photo != Diagnosis.. (Score:3)
.. I'm a bit confused.. is there an App that analysis a photograph and gives you a diagnosis?
Else I'm wondering how taking a photo of an ailment helps diagnosis.. more information is needed.
That said, I think it's the availability of Pocket Internet that is doing this. not necessary smartphones.. keep it abstract and we won't have to also have 'Are ${your-tablet-here} starting a boom of DIY medicine?'....
Further on.. do people really think that every little ailment they have requires a 'medical professional'?
(I am NOT advocating that laypersons diagnosis or treat anything remotely serious.. just it seems to me people are heading to ERs/MDs for issues that could easily be treated at home with just a tiny bit of knowledge..)
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Further on.. do people really think that every little ailment they have requires a 'medical professional'? (I am NOT advocating that laypersons diagnosis or treat anything remotely serious.. just it seems to me people are heading to ERs/MDs for issues that could easily be treated at home with just a tiny bit of knowledge..)
It's amazing how much people's threshold for going to a doctor varies. Some people really do go everytime they have an observable symptom (or at least seem to). Others won't go until their scrotum is the size of a grapefruit and starting to undergo gangrene. Still others just plain never go. IMHO grade school health class should focus on "this is nothing, whereas this is serious", because laypeople often have no idea.
Even more complicated is the patient who has something that's harmless, but thinks i
Less cell phone usage = better health (Score:2)
Quick easy knowledge. (Score:1, Insightful)
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Having a part of a body of knowledge is a damn sight different than being an experienced practitioner in that field.
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Liberating Experiences (Score:3)
Bluetooth cellphone headsets liberated schizophrenics from the stigma of talking out loud to yourself.
DIY cellphone medicine will liberate people who want to stick their cell phone up their anus from the stigma associated with sticking a cell phone up your anus.
Invaluable in the right circumstances (Score:1)
I have an iPhone 4. My wife has advanced Lupus and several other obscure maladies. My ability to grab high quality video of a short & mild (and thankfully rare) seizure/spell, while narrating the event and asking relevant questions of my wife for the 5-10 minutes it lasted was invaluable for the doctor.
Rather than trying to describe it from my or her memory, the doc could see her pupils, see the limb tremors, hear her responses to questions (Do you know where you are, what is today, what are you feeling
Nope (Score:2)
Sensors (Score:4, Informative)
Just today was watching this Solve for X talk [wesolveforx.com], where Kevin Dowling present strechable electronics, that is a very thin sheet can be attached to the skin and work as internal sensors, having communication and so on. Pairing that with a cellphone looks the next logical step.
And yes, with the appropiate sensors a cellphone could be a good boom for diy medicine, provided that it can detect whether you should worry about, take measures for yourself, or scale up to going to a proper doctor or hospital.
mHealth (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're a developer interested in the mobile health field, the mHealth Summit is currently the best annual conference.focused specifically on mobile health out there: http://www.mhealthsummit.org/ [mhealthsummit.org] Eric Topol, the subject of the NY Times article in the summary above, was one of the keynote speakers at the 2011 conference, along with HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Surgeon General Regina Benjamin, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
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Who Will Pay Physicians, Lawyers etc in the Future (Score:1)
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Made extensive use after major injury (Score:3)
If you are dealing with multiple doctors, you need to make sure that each doc has all of the facts, because for the most part, they could care less about anything not directly in their specific field.