GP’s have long bemoaned the internet from which patients not only make their own, normally incorrect, diagnoses, but from which they also try to instruct the Doctor as to what their treatment should be. But what is coming next?
In 2019, Tim Cook, then head of Apple, stated “if you zoom out into the future and you ask the question ‘What was Apple’s greatest contribution to mankind?’ it will be about health.”
The iPhone XX is the concept to which Apple say they are working over the next decade, and one can feel fairly safe in predicting that where Apple lead, Samsung, Google and others will follow. The concept is that your phone will become a personal medical-data hub, collecting information about you from your watch, from your online medical records, from how it tracks you each and every day. To a degree, this is already happening but the development of AI to interpret ever greater amounts of data collected will see great advances. To have your vital signs monitored all day, every day, could well be a gamechanger in our health, with ailments and infections being spotted early, probably even before we ourselves are consciously aware of any change.
But what of the poor GP? One can imagine the conversations as the GP will need to interrogate the phone rather than the human being. Indeed, will each Practice have not only GP’s, Nurse Practioners and Pharmacists, but also Data Analysts? Will the receptionist require a download from your phone before you can make an appointment?
Technology should be there to help us all, and the benefits can be amazing, but let’s hope that the development geeks remember to talk to, and listen to, the people who we really rely on for our health.
*The views expressed are the author’s and not ICAEW’s.