How Apple Inc. helps physicians monitor and treat patients
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Apple is getting more involved in healthcare. And they’re doing some pretty cool stuff for hospitals, doctors, and patients.
Humans, from time immemorial, has always relied on tools for meeting his everyday needs. These tools serve essential purposes in assisting the human race with an extra push to make their world a better place.
In this article, we shall take a deep dive into how Apple Inc. is changing medical practice with its technological tools and platforms.
Intro
Every aspect of healthcare delivery from the reception to the consulting room and laboratory requires the adaptation of the right tools for work. The ability of healthcare providers to deliver the best care has always depended on using the right and effective tools for each process.
Apple Inc. technology is bridging the gap between patient care and the adoption of tools. Using innovative technological tools to assist with efficiency in the hospitals, Apple Inc. is connecting hospitals and patients remotely, while conducting groundbreaking medical research.
The use of these tools creates a more personalized, efficient, and reliable medical care for all. These Apps and gadgets combine the power of artificial intelligence and smart designs to meet the ever-increasing needs of medical care.
How Is Apple Inc. Transforming medical care?
a. Improving healthcare delivery in the hospital
The best healthcare delivery system always relies on the effective interaction between patients, their doctors, and nurses. Patient health records need to be available when needed and must be up to date to accommodate any latest development that a doctor must take into cognizance.
With the new Apps on iOS devices, gaining access to health records and data at the right time is highly effective. It keeps the patient informed and engaged in their personal care via communication with the medical team during hospital stays.
There is an increased interest in the use of Apple Watch and other wearable technologies to record the patient visit with the help of Notable Apps.
The Notable App installed on the Apple watch allows the doctor to speak naturally during an office visit while the app captures the required data then adds lab results, prescription, referrals and prepares everything for sign-off. It also provides all the necessary data needed to update the EHR.
This will ultimately increase patient-doctor interaction during hospital visits while improving service delivery and easing the stress associated with the hassles of meeting patient demands.
This technology is playing a pivotal role in empowering patients at Geisinger, and streamlining healthcare at Ochsner.
b. Continuing patient care at home
With the latest iOS health apps, patients can now stay connected to their caregivers without the stress of visiting the hospitals more often. While there are off-the-shelf apps, Apple Inc. also allows healthcare providers to create their unique apps via CareKit to empower patients in managing their health. These apps can run on all Apple products to make it easy for patients to record their health data and share it with their care teams.
Apple Inc. made a grand entry into the medical field with its Apple Health Record and Apple Watch with a single-lead ECG. With the Apple Health Record app, patients can visualize and store their health records. This means patients can have all their health history on their palms while they move around, thus creating a more holistic view of their health.
Apple Watch Series 5 is one of the best pieces of wearable technologies that are health inclined. It can monitor heart rates and notifies you if something is about to go south. It also plays an active role in keeping track of your menstrual cycle and tells you if the noise level rises to the point that can damage your hearing.
With the ECG app installed on your Apple Watch, it can generate an ECG similar to a single-lead electrocardiogram, which provides doctors with relevant health data. By placing your hands on the crown, the ECG app can generate an accurate heart reading in 30 seconds.
CareKit is an open-source framework for patients interested in developing a healthcare app. It allows users to manage their health by tracking symptoms, creating a dynamic care plan, and also connecting to care teams.
Interested parties can use CareKit apps to achieve their health and wellness goals, recover from surgery or an injury, and manage chronic diseases like diabetes. It only requires users to track their care plans and symptoms and share such information with their care teams.
c. Groundbreaking medical research
Medical research needs a combination of scientific tools and knowledge to strive. With the new Apple Inc. apps and building applications, researchers can now take their findings to the world and help in saving lives.
You can build your unique research-based app with ResearchKit, an open-source framework that streamlines the process of creating an app, thus making it very easy for researchers to enroll participants, capture informed consent, and ultimately gather medical information more frequently. This takes care of the need to collect data periodically.
Unlike CareKit that focuses on patient care, ResearchKit is strictly designed for medical researchers and developers. As an open-source framework, it allows researchers and developers to create wonderful apps strictly for medical research.
This comes in handy in the creation of visual consent flows, real-time dynamic, active tasks, and surveys using a variety of customizable modules that can be developed and shared with the community. It allows users to obtain relevant data for their studies, thus improving medical care.
Conclusion
Welcome to the era of wearable technology, where everything we need is just a click away. Apple Inc. is leading the journey to make efficient healthcare more accessible to everyone regardless of the health condition or status in society.
The ability of Apple products to collaborate with the right developers is simply amazing.
Check out my other posts if you want to learn more about AI, health, and emerging technologies.
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