Dr Topol says he is now prescribing more smart phone apps
than drugs so he can easily follow his patients' progress from a distance.
For patients like Bill Sousa, who lives more than an hour's drive away from the hospital, Cardiologist Dr Eric Topol is a practitioner of the future of medical consultation - equipped with a smart phone and some sensors. One of his patients - Bill Sousa - has recently had heart surgery and Dr Topol is showing him how they can remotely monitor his recovery. The doctor has one sensor that check the rhythm of his heart and another that clips over the tip of his finger to determine the oxygen level in his blood stream.
The sensors connect to a
smart phone and a specialized app sends the results to the cardiologist's
office . Dr Topol explained: "Instead of having it [the equipment] at a
hospital for $ 3,000 - that's what it costs, or more, in some places it's up to
$ 7,000 - you would just use your phone with this app." He has developed
several of these phone apps himself, convinced they are about to evolution into medicine itself here.
For patients like Bill Sousa, who lives more than an hour's drive away from the hospital, Cardiologist Dr Eric Topol is a practitioner of the future of medical consultation - equipped with a smart phone and some sensors. One of his patients - Bill Sousa - has recently had heart surgery and Dr Topol is showing him how they can remotely monitor his recovery. The doctor has one sensor that check the rhythm of his heart and another that clips over the tip of his finger to determine the oxygen level in his blood stream.

As he linking his patients into to a tablet allows him to check his blood
pressure twice a day. He is delighted with how easy it is"It [the app]
automatically sends it [the data] to my doctor, on a weekly basis So, that's
all I have to do" The device is a real money saver in the US,
Where
medical treatment costs more than anywhere else in the world Dr Topol and his
apps are part of a trend. Soterra Wireless, a San Diego based company, has
developed a portable monitoring which is already being tested in a number of
hospitals.Soterra's Garry Manning explained how it works: "It's able to
show all of the vital signs of the patient: his heart rate, blood pressure,
breathing rate, saturation of oxygen, skin temperature"and the patient's
doctor is able to follow-up in real time, via a smart phone, even if the person
being monitored is on the other side of the world.
Manning said the device can speed up the process and help
diagnosis also allow safer exercise "Now, they get that information immediately, so they can make
very quick decisions Eventually, we of course, as other companies may do, will
be able to take that information and be able to start to predict the patient's
deterioration, ahead of time. "The ultimate goal is to be able to predict
someone's medical future.

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