Today, physicians, investors, hospitals, and healthcare business partners, alike, will be gathering together at the Rutgers University Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey to discuss the future of accessible medicine. This year’s mHealthcon Conference is scheduled to focus on mobile healthcare applications for smartphones, tablets, and other wireless devices. The field of medicine is constantly growing and changing. As discussed earlier in the semester, IBM is currently working with WellPoint Inc. to develop a healthcare application based off of Watson, a supercomputer. While the success of such a project has the ability to change the culture of rural medicine as a whole, the use and success of mobile applications, paired with or without Watson, have the ability to diminish the huge healthcare discrepancies that currently exist between rural and urban America.
This biannual conference is a reminder to how fast the mobile health industry is surging. In fact, as mHealthcon’s website explains, this “multi-billion dollar global sector” is growing by approximately 24 percent each year. With the surging popularity of this new industry, it is only a matter of time before healthcare can be managed remotely. In fact, researchers are working on a pill which can wirelessly transmit health information to one’s doctor. Others are working on interfaces which have the ability to monitor heart rate, blood pressure, and glucose levels. When such devices become a staple in our ever-evolving healthcare industry, one can expect the quality of rural healthcare to significantly increase. As it stands, rural areas suffer from a shortage of healthcare professionals as well as from access to quality healthcare. Such devices could help alleviate these problems by allowing doctors to access health information on a more regular basis.