The iPhone and iPhone OS 3.0 will make a surprisingly competent medical assistant, blazing a healthy trail that all smartphones will surely follow soon.
Last week Apple announced a new version of the iPhone OS, adding features to the best-selling platform. Cut and paste, global search, voice navigation, peer-to-peer connectivity for multiplayer games, enhanced Bluetooth, and multimedia messaging will be just a few of the capabilities in iPhone OS 3.0 when it comes to market this summer.
Two apps from the demo last week at One Infinite Loop take advantage of this new OS in a very important way: These apps underline the emerging role of the iPhone as a medical assistant. I'm sensitive to the medical side of things, since I've dealt with hypertension and diabetes for over 18 years. And I'm interested in the role technology plays in helping me and millions of others deal with various health issues. The PC and the Internet itself have been phenomenal tools for anyone with health questions; since sites like WebMD, MayoClinic.com, and others inform us and help people ask their doctors more intelligent questions. At the event in Cupertino, we learned that the smartphone is becoming an important tool in our medicine cabinets, too, letting people research and locate medical information anytime and anywhere. These new apps from Apple add the dimension of real-time monitoring to the iPhone and can play a part in our quest for healthier lives. The first demo involved a blood-pressure cuff that plugged into the connector on the bottom of the iPhone. An application on the iPhone delivered all the controls needed to inflate the cuff for measuring a person's blood pressure. Since an iPhone is always connected via the integrated 3G modem, it could potentially send that data to your doctor for real-time monitoring of your condition. This will become possible with OS 3.0, which will finally enable the iPhone to talk to third-party peripherals. This isn't just a cool app—it has real implications for the doctor/patient relationship. Other digital monitoring systems download data to a PC before sending it to the doctor for review. This app breaks new ground, allowing testing in real time and letting doctors adjust medication needs far more proactively. Although I am a type 2 diabetic and control my diabetes mostly through food, exercise, and oral medications, the second demo was just as interesting to me, since I take blood glucose tests two to three times a day to monitor my blood sugar level. A representative from Johnson & Johnson's LifeScan division showed an app that could tie a blood glucose testing device, such as the company's OneTouch system, to an iPhone. With such a connection, one could download test results to an app on the iPhone to chart various readings graphically. Since it's connected, the device could give real-time information that a person might need to adjust his medicine or insulin. This particular app will also be tied to a community of folks with the same condition, so people can compare treatments, get feedback, and share their own ways of dealing with this disease. These two applications are good examples of what can happen if you add connectivity and new levels of intelligence to something like the iPhone, turning it into an indispensible medical assistant. It will be interesting to see what the broader medical community will do with this new SDK. Will health-care manufacturers apply their knowledge and expertise to a lot of other medical problems and monitoring devices in the future? But smartphones aren't assistants only to those with hypertension or diabetes. These devices are indispensible for the hearing-impaired, too. According to Julie Tsoukalas, a friend whose husband is deaf, text messaging has revolutionized communication in the non-hearing world. Those with total hearing loss use sign language to communicate when they are together, but until they had text messaging and e-mail, they couldn't communicate when apart. Now, my friend can "call" her husband anytime and keep in touch night or day when apart. The iPhone is important to the sightless as well. A phone is already an important communication gateway for the visually impaired; such people can also use audiobooks to deliver information and entertainment. In addition, Apple's new voice-based turn-by-turn navigation could be helpful to pedestrians going from point A to point B in new surroundings. Also, voice communication and the potential of text-to-speech could play an important role in making these devices even more useful someday. To date, the iTunes App Store has the best repertoire of medical applications for smartphones. In fact, there's an entire section that offers over 230 applications—heart-rate monitoring tools, drug information apps, and even training programs for medical students. But I fully expect to see similar apps popping up on the BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre, and Symbian platforms in the near future. I'm sure the folks who invented the cell phone never envisioned the device as a medical assistant. But that is exactly what is happening. And I bet they'd be proud of the new capabilities.
Tim Bajarin is one of the leading analysts working in the technology industry today. He is president of Creative Strategies (www.creativestrategies.com), a research company that produces strategy research reports for 50 to 60 companies annually—a roster that includes semiconductor and PC companies, as well as those in telecommunications, consumer electronics, and media. Customers have included AMD, Apple, Dell, HP, Intel, and Microsoft, among many others. You can e-mail him directly at tim@creativestrategies.com.
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