ReadWriteWeb has a worthwhile feature on the potential for location-based services in healthcare: How might services enabled by GPS, like FourSquare and other future services, impact consumer health and healthcare providers' data set?
"The one person who is not by their computer during a medical transaction is the patient. They are in the hospital or in the pharmacy. As smartphones take off, there will be tremendous potential for really suplementing the patient and bringing them data that's relevant. Location services could recognize that you are going into a pharmacy, for example, and remind you what your prescriptions are and of anything you needed to talk to your pharmacist about regarding those prescriptions." Mark Scrimshire, founder of HealthCamp and an employee at a large healthcare payment company told ReadWriteWeb.
No doubt Scrimshire's example is akin to the classic "get a coupon for a coffee when you walk by a Starbucks" example too often used by location-based mobile marketing visionaries.
"When you walk into the doctor's office, your smartphone should configure your data and prompt you to transmit your health measurements from home quickly and easily, because it knows where you are. I think there's a lot of potential for augmentation of the patient to let them monitor their own health. That will happen through a wide variety of sensors and location is one important factor that will provide context for that sensor data. 'Blood pressure up? Well, he was at work again,'" Scrimshire said.
Scrimshire's final point is well-taken -- making monitoring tools location aware would potentially add valuable information to the readings, especially for making correlations between readings and activities.
Brian Ahier, Health IT Evangelist at Mid Columbia Medical Center in Dalles, Oregon: "I would love to see HospitalCompare.com and Health and Human Services (HHS) data mashed up with mobile location apps for health care consumers. Helping me find the best pediatrican or orthopedic surgeon would be a great application. And once I'm there, I want to lodge a positive or negative complaint on the same service."
That sounds a bit like what Healthagen is doing with its iTriage mobile app but iTriage lacks the all important user review component.
"HIPAA [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996] is used as an excuse not to share, but the P is for portability. The big trap door is that we as patients can demand our data, people may want to charge us for us, but our information is our currency. We can decide when and with whom we want to share it," Scrimshire said.
When it comes to location-enabled services, privacy has always been a concern for service providers. With the stakes raised for healthcare applications it's likely that location-enabled mobile apps will be a HIPAA battleground for mobile health.
Read the entire RWW article here
