Dr Eric Topol, one of the world’s leading cardiologists, reveals how the smartphone has the potential to revolutionise healthcare and create far more targeted treatment for patients.
Eric, who has been listed as one of the top ten cited researchers in all of medicine and has been voted the number one most influential physician-leader in the United States, explains the huge range of tests that phones can now carry out, from assessing kidney function to controlling asthma. And with technical attachments, phones can also do full body ultrasound scans, skin, eye and eye tests. All in real time and far cheaper than using conventional hospital technology.
But the real game changer is the wearable biosensors that can be attached to patients and their phones, collecting data 24 hours a day. Information that can then be fed back directly to patients and their doctors. This can help doctors spot drug interactions, discover which drugs work for which patient, assess how a patient’s genetic make-up may affect how they respond to a treatment or medication. All of which will enable doctors to treat diseases earlier and more effectively, and potentially even prevent illnesses developing at all.
Eric argues that this individualised approach will help put patients at the centre of their own care and bring what he says is the long over due democratisation of medicine.
Dr Eric Topol is the founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research Institute and has also advised the UK’s NHS.
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