The following is a guest article by Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq, Chairman, CEO & Founder at Biotricity.
In 2011, near the end of his almost decade-long fight with cancer, Steve Jobs had a realization: “I think the biggest innovations of the 21st century will be at the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning.”
Jobs was a renowned futurist, and now, ten years later, we’re starting to see hints of what that new era might look like – facilitated largely in part by one of his most memorable legacies: the modern smartphone. Traditional barriers keeping people from accessing health information are being broken down by consumer-friendly health platforms available on smartphones through connected devices, sensors, and apps. This is paving the way for a patient-empowered healthcare system where health records, treatments, and healthcare professionals are more accessible than they ever have been.
Smartphones have enabled the creation of new connected healthcare tools like apps for chronic disease management, counseling, medication management, and specialized care. According to records from IQVIA, there are over 400,000 healthcare apps available for consumers to download worldwide. Apps give consumers a way to easily access healthcare information in unprecedented ways – connecting them to healthcare professionals and opening access to specialists and treatments. You can now see a doctor on video through your phone, send photos, and share health information in minutes. Apps display the data on your phone in a user-friendly format, often with analytics that can be used to support self-management or share with a physician. By 2020, there was estimated to be more than 50 billion smart connected devices in the world, collecting, analyzing and sharing data.
At the core of this new era is data – a lot of it. In the past ten years alone, the amount of data created has jumped from 5 zettabytes to an estimated 74 zettabytes (that’s 74 billion terabytes, for reference), much of it generated by the increasing prevalence of smartphones in the world’s population. About 97% of Americans now own a smartphone, compared to only 35% ten years ago, and worldwide, the number of smartphone users has more than tripled since 2012. The data generated by our phones leaves a digital fingerprint of our lives though apps, photos, messages, GPS, and sensors.
This data can tell us a lot about our health, too. Smartphone apps for healthcare, combined with connected healthcare devices, are helping create detailed and precise snapshots of individual health. We take our phones with us everywhere, generating a rich collection of high-quality data as we go about our everyday lives. One study used machine learning techniques to predict Parkinson’s disease, through passively collected data in subjects’ phones, with 100% accuracy.
Pairing phones with medical devices and wearables can even further extend their capabilities. Fitbit, Apple, and Samsung all have smartwatches with healthcare tracking features such as ECG, sleep quality, and detailed activity metrics. Clinically, smartwatches aren’t quite up to par with medical devices. But smartphones can now support connectivity and act as an accessory to portable medical devices like glucose meters, ECG monitors, weight scales, stethoscopes, and even ultrasounds.
One company, MIR Smart, has developed a pocket-sized, personal spirometer that measures your peak flow rate and FEV1 (that’s the amount of air you can force from your lungs in one second) through a Bluetooth connection to your phone or tablet. A platform developed by Healthy.io uses the camera to remote track wound care and healing over time. Another, CliniCloud, makes a digital, touchless thermometer that uses infrared and syncs to your phone and partners with a telemedicine company to provide access to a physician for analysis. And Google recently announced that they would be adding image recognition capabilities to smartphones and digital cameras that can detect almost 300 different skin conditions, powered by AI.
We’re in the early stages of the new era, so there are still concerns about accuracy – most of these sensors haven’t progressed enough to claim clinical capabilities, and they can vary widely in quality. But as medical sensors become even smaller and more accurate, it’s possible that they could eventually be integrated right into smartphones themselves. They could, for example, allow you to assess the strength of inhalation and exhalation through high-resolution microphones and optical sensors or be held directly against the body to collect biosignals. They may be able to recognize speech and modify the signal to a frequency and volume that the user can hear, acting as a hearing aid.
The novel ways that smartphones, personal health devices and wearables provide us with health information are transforming healthcare, advancing the development of treatments and reducing healthcare costs. This interconnectivity of apps, devices and sensors is generating enough data to rapidly enable development of new therapeutics and treatment plans. This new field of medicine is known broadly as personalized medicine –medicine tailored for the individual based on their lifestyle, data collected through devices like smartphones, and what genetic data suggests about potential treatment response.
Humans vary widely at the genetic, biochemical, physiological, exposure, and behavioral levels – especially with respect to disease processes and treatment responsiveness. A traditional, trial-and-error approach to medicine leaves room for misdiagnosis, severe side effects, drug toxicity, and disease progression – all costly, and sometimes deadly, errors. The availability of high-quality, longitudinal data provides physicians a more complete picture of patient health, and its aggregation assists researchers in optimizing potential treatments. An individual’s data alone won’t glean insights that can drive the development of personalized medicine, but relationships between different data points can. Personalized medicine can help improve outcomes by reducing the risk of unnecessary treatment or treatments that don’t work. It’s a proactive approach to healthcare that works more effectively for both patients and physicians.
Healthcare should not be one size fits all. We all have different genetic and epigenetic makeup, environments and stressors; we all make different choices regarding our health and lifestyle. Our phones, wearables, and healthcare devices can help us quantify those differences and help physicians make more accurate decisions for treatment based on our individual profiles. These technologies aren’t meant to replace physicians – a doctor’s input is still necessary to effectively manage care. But they can increase touchpoints with patients, improve engagement, and provide appealing ways to educate about health.
The future of medicine will see the smartphone’s capabilities built out even further to facilitate accessibility and personalize treatment. Last year, digital health had its biggest year in funding yet – a sign of more innovation to come. Healthcare apps usage jumped by 37% during the pandemic, indicating rising demand and acceptance among consumers. For patients, the benefits are clear: personalized medicine enhances outcomes. With devices and smartphones that can travel with us anywhere, we’ll see technology further our understanding of health by advancing individualized care. The health data revolution is only just beginning.
About Dr. Waqaas Al-Siddiq
Waqaas, the founder of Biotricity, is a serial entrepreneur, a former investment advisor and an expert in wireless communication technology. Academically, he was distinguished for his various innovative designs in digital, analog, embedded, and micro-electro-mechanical products. His work was published in various conferences such as IEEE and the National Communication Council.
Waqaas has held several high-level design positions in IBM, AMD, and Intel. His achievements have been numerous in both the technical and academic world. Coupled with this, Waqaas has vast experience in leading various groups through his board experience and executive roles within start-ups, mid-sized companies, and non-profits.
Waqaas has a dual Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and Economics, a Master’s in Computer Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Henley Business School. He also holds a Doctorate in Business with a specialty in Transformative Innovations and Billion Dollar Markets.
