Ticking All The Boxes For A Health Care Upgrade At Strata Rx

What is needed for successful reform of the health care system?

Here’s what we all know: that a data-rich health care future is coming our way. And what it will look like, in large outlines. Health care reformers have learned that no single practice will improve the system. All of the following, which were discussed at O’Reilly’s recent Strata Rx conference, must fall in place.

Data collection in daily living

Office visits, even if done every three or four months, can’t deal with the behavioral and life style issues that characterize modern illnesses. People can live better with chronic conditions if their medicine bottles report their adherence to prescriptions (and get a text message or phone call when they forget to take their pill), their carpets report if their tread is wavering, and their scales report their daily weight.

mHealth and telemedicine

The Internet can connect everybody: patients can send photos of symptoms to their doctors, doctors can consult with other doctors, and patients can exchange ideas with each other. Telemedicine makes use of all that data we hope individuals will collect about their health–and not just in developed regions of the world.

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