Medically connected

Monitoring health with devices that can be hooked to smartphones

Dr Eric Topol,a cardiologist and director of Scripps Translational Science Institute in California,is only half joking when he says the smartphone is the future of medicine because most of his patients seem surgically connected to one.

But he says in all seriousness that the smartphone will be a sensor that will help people take better control of their health by tracking it with precision. His book,The Creative Destruction of Medicine,lays out his vision for how people will start running common medical tests,skipping office visits and sharing data with people other than physicians.

Dr Topol is already seeing signs of this as companies find ways to hook medical devices to the computing power of smartphones. Devices to measure blood pressure,monitor blood sugar,hear heartbeats and chart heart activity are already in the hands of patients. He acknowledges that some doctors are skeptical of these devices. The medical profession doesnt like DIY anything, he said. There are some progressive digital doctors who recognise the opportunities for better care and prevention,but most are resistant to change.

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Apple was promoting the iPhone as a platform for medical devices in 2009. An entire marketplace is evolving that marries the can-do attitude of hacking devices with the fervour of the wellness movement.

Smartphones make taking care of yourself more of a game,Dr Topol said. I recommend these devices because it makes it fun and I get more readings than if I ask them to do it manually.

The enthusiasm for this vision of do-it-yourself medicine with a smartphone,though,must be balanced with the cold reality that all experimenters should consult with their physicians.

Some of the attempts to turn the iPhone into a medical device are little more than toys. The iStethoscope Pro app warns,This app is intended to be used for entertainment purposes. It has been given uniformly poor reviews.

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A French start-up,Withings,has created a blood pressure cuff that connects to an iPad or an iPhone. The cuff will automatically inflate,deflate and then record the pulse rate and the blood pressure. The app will graph the pressure over time,making trends easier to see. Withings also includes a connection to its website so users can share their data with doctors either directly through password-protected pages or through third-party sites.

The growing incidence of diabetes is by many estimates the biggest public health challenge today,so companies are developing tools to help people with the disease manage their blood sugar. Tom Xu,the founder of SkyHealth in El Cerrito,California,created the website glucosebuddy.com to help people keep track of the sugar in their blood. The numbers must be entered manually. The site works with an app for the iPhone to gather the blood glucose level and some information about when it was taken. Our main goal of glucosebuddy is not to just record numbers. Thats the boring part, he said. Once you know how your diet affects your blood sugar,you take your health more seriously.